Combustion of aluminum droplets in solid rocket propellants is studied using laser diagnostic techniques. The time-resolved droplet velocity, temperature, and size are measured using high speed digital in-line holography and imaging pyrometry at 20 kHz.
Plenoptic imaging is a promising emerging technology for single-camera, 3D diagnostics of particle fields. In this work, recent developments towards quantitative measurements of particle size, positions, and velocities are discussed. First, the technique is proven viable with measurements of the particle field generated by the impact of a water drop on a thin film of water. Next, well cont rolled experiments are used to verify diagnostic uncertainty. Finally, an example is presented of 3D plenoptic imaging of a laboratory scale, explosively generated fragment field.
Due to the increasing prevalence of plenoptic imaging it is necessary to explore the volumetric calibration of this imaging system to correct for inaccuracies due to real world lens distortions and thin lens assumptions in current processing methods. An overview of plenoptic imaging is given and methods of volumetric calibration of a plenoptic camera based on a polynomial mapping function are presented. The accuracy and feasibility of these methods are examined. Preliminary results suggest that use of a 3D polynomial mapping function provides a significant increase in reconstruction accuracy. Depth accuracy of particle location in calibrated volumes was measured to be accurate within 1% of the calculated volume size.
The breakup of liquid metals is of relevance to powder formation, thermal spray coatings, liquid metal cooling systems, investigations of accident scenarios, and model validation. In this work, a column of liquid Galinstan, a room-temperature liquid metal alloy, is studied in a shock-induced cross-flow. Backlit experiments are used to characterize breakup morphology and digital in-line holography is used to quantitatively measure the size and speed of secondary droplets. Two-dimensional simulations are also developed in order to help understand the underlying mechanisms that drive breakup behavior. Results show that although breakup morphologies are similar for water and Galinstan at the same Weber number, the breakup distance, secondary droplet size, and secondary droplet shapes differ. Evidence indicates that secondary droplet formation may be related to the Weber number, density ratio, the convective velocity and other effects.
The combustion of molten metals is an important area of study with applications ranging from solid aluminized rocket propellants to fireworks displays. This work uses digital in-line holography (DIH) to experimentally quantify the three-dimensional position, size, and velocity of aluminum particles during combustion of ammonium perchlorate (AP) based solid-rocket propellants. In addition, spatially resolved particle temperatures are simultaneously measured using two-color imaging pyrometry. To allow for fast characterization of the properties of tens of thousands of particles, automated data processing routines are proposed. Using these methods, statistics from aluminum particles with diameters ranging from 15 to 900 µm are collected at an ambient pressure of 83 kPa. In the first set of DIH experiments, increasing initial propellant temperature is shown to enhance the agglomeration of nascent aluminum at the burning surface, resulting in ejection of large molten aluminum particles into the exhaust plume. The resulting particle number and volume distributions are quantified. In the second set of simultaneous DIH and pyrometry experiments, particle size and velocity relationships as well as temperature statistics are explored. The average measured temperatures are found to be 2640 ± 282 K, which compares well with previous estimates of the range of particle and gas-phase temperatures. The novel methods proposed here represent new capabilities for simultaneous quantification of the joint size, velocity, and temperature statistics during the combustion of molten metal particles. The proposed techniques are expected to be useful for detailed performance assessment of metalized solid-rocket propellants.