Thrust Performance Improvement for a Water/Liquid Nitrogen Rocket Engine

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We propose a water/liquid nitrogen rocket engine as a new non-combustion type rocket engine. Liquid nitrogen is mixed with heated water and specific volume of nitrogen is increased by evaporation. Thrust force is obtained by exhaust of nitrogen gas through a nozzle with water particles. Results of previous experiments indicated a specific impulse is 60 % of the theoretically estimated value. By evaluating the characteristic exhaust velocity and other thrust characteristics, we found that the lower-than-expected specific impulse is due to insufficient propellant mixing and heat transfer between heated water and liquid nitrogen in the mixing chamber. We also performed high-speed imaging experiments to visualize impinging and mixing of propellants. Results indicate that in the original injection setup, heat conveyed by heated water is not adequately transferred to the liquid nitrogen. An alternative injection pattern was tested, which resulted in a 10% increase in the characteristic exhaust velocity. In addition, we tested a new type of injector designed for more efficient mixing and heat transfer that exhibited 30 % increase in characteristic exhaust velocity. Furthermore, we modified the theoretical expression for the characteristic exhaust velocity based on multi-phased flow theory so that it agrees well with the experimental results.