Visualization of Electroconductive Polymer Ignition in Nitrous Oxide for Hybrid Rocket Propulsion

A Combustion Visualization Wind Tunnel has been developed at Hokkaido University to study the ignition of fuels using gaseous oxidizers. One of the aspects that needs to be investigated is the ignition delay of electroconductive polymers. To gain a deeper understanding of this phenomenon, a high-speed camera was used to observe the ignition process using a flat plate fuel sample, with gaseous N2O as the oxidizer at a flow rate of up to 27.9 g/s. Results show that ignition with shorter ignition delay time occurs partly due to heated carbon particles entering the boundary between oxidizer and gasified fuel at low oxidizer flow velocities while ignition due to fuel heating is dominant at higher velocities.