Internal Ballistics Simulation of a NAWC Tactical SRM

Abstract

In the design and development of solid propellant rocket motors, the use of numerical tools able to predict the behavior of a given motor is particularly important in order to decrease the planning times and costs. This paper is devoted to present the results of the internal ballistics numerical simulation of the NAWC tactical motor n. 6, from ignition to burn-out, by means of a quasi-one-dimensional unsteady numerical simulation model, SPINBALL, coupled with a three-dimensional grain burnback model, GREG. In particular, the attention is focused on the effects on the SRM behavior of the erosive burning, total pressure drops and the cause of the pressure overpeak occurring during the last part of the ignition transient. The final objective is to develop an analysis/simulation capability of SRM internal ballistics for the entire combustion time with simplified physical models, in order to have reduced the computational costs, but ensuring an accuracy greater than the one usually given by zero-dimensional models. The results of the simulations indicate a very good agreement with the experimental data, as no attempt of submodels calibration is made, enforcing the ability of the proposed approach to predict the SRMs internal flow-field conditions. The numerical simulations show that NAWC n. 6 internal ballistics is completely led by the erosive burning, that is the root cause of the pressure peak occurring immediately after the SRM start-up.