NUMERICAL STUDIES ON COMBUSTION

INSTABILITY OF SOLID ROCKET MOTOR

A PROJECT REPORT-PHASE-II (AE1611)
Submitted by

GAUTHAM .P
(0001228003)
in partial fulfillment for the award of the degree
of

MASTER OF TECHNOLOGY
in

AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING

DEPARTMENT OF AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING

SCHOOL OF AERONAUTICAL SCIENCES

HINDUSTAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE

PADUR, CHENNAI - 603 103
April 2014

NUMERICAL STUDIES ON COMBUSTION

INSTABILITY OF SOLID ROCKET MOTOR
A PROJECT REPORT-PHASE-II (AE1611)
Submitted by

GAUTHAM .P
(0001228003)
in partial fulfillment for the award of the degree
of

MASTER OF TECHNOLOGY
in

AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING

DEPARTMENT OF AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING

SCHOOL OF AERONAUTICAL SCIENCES

HINDUSTAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE

PADUR, CHENNAI - 603 103
April 2014

HINDUSTAN UNIVERSITY: PADUR, CHENNAI - 603 103

BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE
Certified that this project report titled NUMERICAL STUDIES ON
COMBUSTION INSTABILITY OF SOLID ROCKET MOTOR is the
bonafide work of P.GAUTHAM (Register No: 1228003) who carried out the
project work under my supervision. Certified further that to the best of my
knowledge the work reported here does not form part of any other project /
research work on the basis of which a degree or award was conferred on an earlier
occasion on this or any other candidate.

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT

Dr. Dilip A. Shah,

SUPERVISOR
Mr. Yash Pal

Department of Aeronautical
Engineering

Assistant professor
Department of Aeronautical
Engineering

Hindustan Institute of
Technology and Science, Padur

Hindustan Institute of Technology

and Science, Padur

The Project Phase II Viva-Voce Examination is held on _______________

INTERNAL EXAMINER

EXTERNAL EXAMINER

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First and foremost I would like to thank the Lord Almighty for His presence and immense
blessings throughout the project work.
Its a matter of pride and privilege for me to express my deep gratitude to the management of
HITS for providing me the necessary facilities and support.
I am highly elated in expressing my sincere and abundant respect to the Vice Chancellor
DR.S.RAMACHANDRAN for giving me this opportunity to bring out and implement my ideas
in this project.
I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to DR.DILIP A SHAH, Head of the Department of
Aeronautical Engineering for much of his valuable support encouragement in carrying out this
work.
I would like to thank my internal guide MR. YASH PAL, for continually guiding and actively
participating in my project, giving valuable suggestions to complete the project work.
I would like to thank all the technical and teaching staff of the Aeronautical Engineering
Department, who extended directly or indirectly all support.
Last, but not the least, I am deeply indebted to my parents who have been the greatest support
while I worked day and night for the project to make it a success.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE

PAGE NO.

Abstract

List of Abbreviations

ii

List of Tables

iii

List of Figures

iv

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Instabilities in solid rocket motor
1.3 Project objective
1.4 Motivation
1.5 Need for the Project
1.6 Thesis Organization
1.7 Summary

2. LITERATURE SURVEY
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Prior works
2.3 Summary

1
1
2
4
4
5
5
6

7
7
7
14

3. METHODOLOGY
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Scale model
3.3 Computational domain
3.4 Boundary conditions
3.5 GAMBIT
3.6 Computational methodology
3.7 Summary

18
18
18
19
20
21
22
26

4. MODELS AND MESHING

4.1 Introduction
4.2 Model
4.3 Meshing
4.4 Grids and type of meshing
4.5 Summary
5. PROJECT VALIDATION

27
27
27
28
28
30
31

5.1 Introduction

31

5.2 Comparison of results

31

5.3 Summary

33

6. FLUENT ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

34

6.1 Non-Premixed Combustion Model

34

6.2 Equilibrium Mixture Fraction/ PDF Model

35

6.3 Problem description

35

6.4 PDF mixture

36

6.5 PDF Table

37

6.6 FLUENT analysis and results

41

6.7 Contours and XY plots

42

6.8 Summary

68

7. RESULT AND CONCLUSION

References

69

70