Integrated Simulation Of Flow Field Inside A Micro-thruster

A solid propellant micro-thrusters array based on MEMS technology can provide microspacecraft thrust and impulse bits for stationkeeping,attitude control,resistance compensation and orbit adjustment.With low cost,high reliability advantages,in the late 1990’s it began to received widespread attention.Key to develop the solid propellant micro-thrusters is generating extremely accurate thrust levels and impulse bits.Modeling and simulation can predict the propellant combustion and gas expanse processes inside the thrusters,this paper is about numerical simulation of a type of solid propellant micro-thurster.2-D axisymmetric models were established to research into the character of the micro-thruster.By the establishes of burning face annealing model,slipping wall model,discrete particle model,the numerical simulation model was established.Then a simulation platform was established base on software FLUENT and user-defined functions.The complete working process of the micro-thruster was studied.Due to the numerical simulation study of solid propellant micro-thrusters is still lack of the research on the transient working process,burning rate formula was used to simulate the transient annealing process of the propellant surface.The parameters such as temperature,pressure,particle concentration,gas flow velocity,Mach number,and the thrust were got,as well as how they change with time.Then the influence of factors,for instance,heat loss and slipping wall effect on the working process and performance were analyzed.