Satellite Hydrazine Propulsion System Design Trades

Numerical simulations have been conducted to investigate the effects of various key design parameters on the transport behavior of the propellant flow for a hydrazine-based satellite propulsion system. The flow-channel network numerical scheme was used to determine the blowdown curves for characterizing the propulsive performance of typical 500 kg-class small satellites at different tank sizes and thrust values. This study covers tank volumes from 91 l to 104 l and thrust forces from 1 N to 8.896 N. In order to explore the response of transient propagating waves, a theoretical model in conjunction with the method of characteristics (MOC) was solved numerically to obtain the pressure and propellant mass flowrate histories at various thrust levels and different total pipeline lengths. The predicted results indicate that larger amplitudes of pressure oscillations are observed for the situation of higher thrusts. For different total pipeline lengths, the Fourier spectrum analysis reveals that a longer pipeline shows a lower first-mode frequency with a higher spectral intensity as a trend.