This study addresses the design challenges of a proposed Micro Pulse Detonation Engine (MPDE), a micropropulsion system devised to meet the needs of smallsats . It focusses in particular on one subsystem of the proposed MPDE, the explosive delivery system, hereafter refered to as an ejector of granular materials. This study has three major goals: (1) evaluate different ways of building ejectors of granular materials in space, (2) propose a design for an ejector of granular materials that could eventually be used to achieve ejection rates of 10 kHz, and (3) evaluate the new designs performance. We thus begin by reviewing devices that have been built or proposed in the past for ejecting granular materials. Finding them lacking for the objectives of the present project, we evaluate several other different ways of achieving granule ejection in the zero gravity environment of space, based on other previous work with granular materials generally. We conclude that the artificial gravity induced within a spinning apparatus provides for many of the design requirements in a way that none of the other options do. We then go on to discuss the novel challenges a rotating ejector of solids faces, and propose a way of overcoming them. We present the design of the simplest concept we could come up with to achieve controlled ejection from the rotating device. Finally, the performance of this system is evaluated experimentally, using glass ballotini as the granular material. We find that we are able to demonstrate an ejection rate of 50 ejections per second with the device rotating at 10 rotations per second, with the possibility of attaining even higher ejection rates at higher rotational velocities. We conclude that this device demonstrates that there is a very great likelihood that future designs based closely on it will be able to achieve the desired 10 kHz ejection rate, which is the highest ejection rate at which the proposed MPDE can operate while remaining in the higher efficiency vacuum mode.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:usherbrooke.ca/oai:savoirs.usherbrooke.ca:11143/6183 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Jensen, Michael |
| Contributors | Brouillette, Martin |
| Publisher | Université de Sherbrooke |
| Source Sets | Université de Sherbrooke |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Mémoire |
| Rights | © Michael Jensen |
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