Rocket Propulsion Elements, 9th Edition

CHAPTER 12SOLID PROPELLANT ROCKET MOTOR FUNDAMENTALS

This is the first of four chapters dealing exclusively with solid propellant rocket motors—the word motor is as common to solid propellants as the word engine is to liquid propellants. In this chapter, we cover burning rates, grain configurations, rocket motor performance, and structural issues. In solid propellant rocket motors the propellant is contained and stored directly within the combustion chamber, sometimes hermetically sealed for long‐time storage (5 to 20 years). Motors come in many different types and sizes, varying in thrust from about 2 N to over 12 million N (0.4 to over 3 million lbf). Historically, solid propellant rocket motors have been credited with having no moving parts. This is still true of many, but some rocket motor designs include movable nozzles and actuators for vectoring (rotating the line of thrust relative to the motor axis). But in comparison to liquid rockets, solid rockets are typically much simpler, are easy to attach (often constituting most of the vehicle structure), do not leak, are ready to ignite, and require little servicing; however, they cannot be fully checked out prior to use and for most applications thrust cannot be randomly varied in flight.

The subjects of thrust vector control, exhaust plumes, and testing are omitted from these four chapters but are treated for both liquid and solid propellant units in Chapters 18, 20, and 21, respectively. Chapter 19 provides a comparison ...