Shock Tube Study of Solid Fuel Ramjet HTPB Hydrocarbon Intermediates

There has been recent interest in hypersonic vehicles and energetic materials for the application of rockets and missiles. Solid-fired ramjets are commonly used as missiles and use HTPB as their solid propellant in the combustion chamber. HTPB breaks up during the combustion process and initially undergoes pyrolysis and breaks into other hydrocarbons. One of the intermediates of pyrolysis hydrocarbon is an aromatic benzene. Studying the species time histories of this fuel will aid in the effort to simulate solid-fired ramjets and improve their efficiency and performance. The experiment was run at ramjet combustor relevant operating conditions of 5 atm and 1436 K. The oxidation experiments are conducted at rich conditions of equivalence ratio 4.0. Predictions from the HyChem model are simulated with Chemkin Pro and compared with the experiment results.