Chemical method for achieving acceleration of macroparticles to ultrahigh velocities. Annual report. Progress report No. 1, 1 June 1985-28 February 1986

The authors have been exploring the critical aspects of this program largely as outlined in the statement of work of their original proposal. Their main concentration has been on the velocity range between 6 and 50 km/sec. Recent investigations have proved very encouraging in that they have revealed a way in which they can use conventional gaseous explosives such as oxygen and hydrogen properly diluted to achieve velocities up to 11 km/sec. A discussion of this promising technique is contained in Appendix A. This has been an important finding in that it allows the use of a more comfortable entrance velocity to the beginning of the technique of the solid explosive driven ramjet. This would avoid the complication of sensitizing a relatively low detonation velocity solid explosive and constitutes, the authors feel, a significant advance in their theoretical development. As stated in the original proposal, calculations up to the 25 km/sec range necessitated the adoption of simplifications in order to develop an overall physical picture of the process. The authors fully realize that, before proposing any serious experiments, a much more complete set of calculations of the 11 to 50 km/sec possibilities must be developed. Therefore, they have initiated themore » process of developing the computational fluid mechanics codes necessary to carry out the detailed calculations necessary to either uncover hidden difficulties or unexpected advantages. These computational fluid dynamics calculations have been initiated, using recent advances in computational fluid mechanics principles. Work on the axisymmetric nonsteady flow codes is currently under way and it appears that there do not exist any unusual computational barriers to prevent obtaining the required depth of understanding for this program. Current progress in this program and plans for the future are reported in Appendix B.« less