Experimental Investigation of a H2O2 Hybrid Rocket with Different Swirl Injections and Fuels

Hybrid rockets have very interesting characteristics like simplicity, reliability, safety, thrust modulation, environmental friendliness and lower costs, which make them very attractive for several applications like sounding rockets, small launch vehicles, upper stages, hypersonic test-beds and planetary landers. In recent years, advancements have been made to increase hybrid motor performance, and two of the most promising solutions are vortex injection and paraffin-based fuels. Moreover, both technologies can be also used to tailor the fuel regression rate, in the first case varying the swirl intensity, and in the second case with the amount and type of additives. In this way, it is possible not only to design high-performing hybrid motors, but also to adjust their grain and chamber geometries to different mission requirements, particularly regarding thrust and burning time. In this paper, the knowledge about these two technical solutions and their coupling is extended. Three sets of experimental campaigns were performed in the frame of the Italian Space Agency-sponsored PHAEDRA program. The first one investigated a reference paraffin fuel with axial and standard vortex injection. The second campaign tested vortex injection with low values of swirl numbers down to 0.5 with a conventional plastic fuel, namely polyethylene. Finally, the last campaign tested another, lower regressing, paraffin-based fuel with the same low swirl numbers as the second campaign.