Arcjet rocket

About: Arcjet rocket is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1121 publications have been published within this topic receiving 9687 citations. The topic is also known as: Arcjet.

Calculation of Radiation from a Shock Layer Flow in an Arc-Jet Facility

Abstract: The radiation from the shock layer flow over the blunt body placed in a 20MW arcjet facility is analyzed. The nozzle throat condition is calculated using an arc heater flowfield code (ARCFLO3). Two-temperature thermochemical nonequilibrium codes are used to calculate the expanding flow in the nozzle region downstream of the throat and to calculate the shock layer flowfield over the blunt body. The radiation spectrum incident on the stagnation point of the blunt body is computed using a line-by-line radiation method. The calculated result is compared with the experimental spectrum over the wavelength region from 1000 to 9000˚ The result shows that the calculation underestimates the measurement by up to a factor of about 1000. Possible reasons for the discrepancy between calculation and measurement are discussed. The present result shows that it is likely that the measured spectrum include the radiation from the hot flow in the settling chamber region.

Preliminary Measurements of the Motion of Arcjet Current Channel Using Inductive Magnetic Probes

Abstract: This paper covers the design and first measurements of non-perturbative, external inductive magnetic diagnostics for arcjet constrictors which can measure the motion of the arc current-channel. These measurements of arc motion are motivated by previous simulations using the ARC Heater Simulator (ARCHeS), which predicted unsteady arc motion due to the magnetic kink instability. Measurements of the kink instability are relevant to characterizing motion of the enthalpy profile of the arcjet, the arcjet operational stability, and electrode damage due to associated arc detachment events. These first measurements indicate $\pm4$ mm oscillations at 0.5-2 kHz of the current profile.