THEORETICAL STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF DEBONDINGS ON SOLID ROCKET MOTOR PERFORMANCE

In solid rocket motors, propellant debondings are very dangerous since they could cause an increment of the burning surface area and anticipate the exposure of case-insulating thermal protection material. Therefore, when a debonding internal zone is discovered, it is of primary importance to guarantee that the solid rocket motor is still able to accomplish the mission within its operational requirements. From a numerical point of view, debondings cannot be evaluated in an analytical, closed form due to their variety of shapes. The present study is aimed at assessing the impact of debondings through the adoption of advanced computer graphic techniques like the offsetting of the solid rocket motor burning surface discretized as a dynamic three-dimensional triangular mesh. Mesh handling algorithms are discussed in detail. Numerical results are obtained through an in-house simulation software which has been developed based on the aforementioned methods.