size. Equilibrium thermochemistry was used to supplement these data to develop a gas phase combustion model.

The gas phase reactions and resulting particle definition were modeling using the FLUENT Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code for the baseline GQM-163A Supersonic Sea Skimming Missile (SSST) operating conditions. These results were compared to direct-connect ramjet ground tests in order to validate the analysis tool. Data were developed to understand the gas and solid phase fuel exhaust characteristics at the propellant surface, exiting the gas generator injector, and following secondary combustion with air. Particles were collected and analyzed from the fuel generator exhaust. While exhibiting some variation with time in the firing, they were roughly an average of 20 microns in diameter, in line with prior experience with pulverized coal combustion experiments. A computational model was developed based on coal combustion parameters using FLUENT. However, despite considerable effort, the CFD analysis was not able to predict effective burning of the carbon particles to the degree seen in testing. In addition, using equilibrium thermochemistry as a basis for determining the carbon particle content in the fuel exhaust, the CFD analysis resulted in trends in performance opposite to the test results. These facts led to a hypothesis that there was actually a significant fraction of small particles or much less carbon produced than equilibrium thermochemistry would predict. A parametric analysis was performed replacing the 20 micron soot particles with fine fraction particles, representing a fraction of the predicted equilibrium carbon soot being still in the gas phase as higher molecular weight hydrocarbons, or in the form of sub-micron particles. When almost all particles were replaced with fine fraction particles, the model was able to correctly predict absolute values of combustion efficiency as well as trends for different injector geometries. The presence of particles was apparent from the visible exhaust and collection data, however they were found not to play a significant role in the combustion process for this fuel and engine configuration. The robustness of the computational model was also evaluated by examining the effects of turbulence model, order of discretization, and grid size. Comparable trends and results were seen for all cases examined.

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