Measurement of admittance and acoustic augmentation of burning rate of composite solid propellants using Laser Doppler Velocimetry

Abstract The present work involves the use of Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) technique to measure the acoustic admittance of aluminized composite solid propellant (AP/HTPB/Al) by experimentally measuring the instantaneous velocities of the particles of solid propellant during burning while the acoustic pressure oscillations are being imposed. Both velocity fluctuations and pressure fluctuations are measured synchronously. The probe volume of the laser is maintained at a constant distance from the burning surface by using a linear actuator. Tests were conducted for two aluminized composite solid propellants at low frequency ranges (130-312 Hz) of the longitudinal acoustic modes and mean chamber pressures ranging from 1 to 4 MPa. A rotary valve is designed to acoustically excite the chamber to the required resonant frequency. It was found that admittance rises with frequency and peaks around 260 Hz and then falls. The use of linear actuator mechanism significantly improves the velocity data rate (number of data points). Maintaining the probe volume at 800 to 900 µm above the propellant surface is very crucial to determine the admittance accurately. Test results revealed that a good agreement between the steady state mean burning rates with the window bomb experiments is achieved. The measured mean burn rates under imposed acoustic pressure oscillations shows the augmentation up to 55%. The admittance measured for the metallized composite propellant using this technique and the comparison with T-burner shows good agreement. The comparison of responses with LDV and T-burner and the augmentation factor due to acoustic oscillations using LDV are reported for the first time.