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Development And Testing Of An Ignition Physics Test Facility And An Oxygen/Methane Swirl Torch Igniter, Jesus Roberto Flores

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There are many advantages to LOX/methane propulsion, such as in-situ resource utilization from Mars and the Moon, and simplicity of ground operations due to its non-toxic nature. There exists a lack of fundamental understanding of the ignition physics, and flame characteristics of these propellants when related to rocket propulsion, which has created undesirably long design cycles and flight hardware that is not optimized. Motivated by these issues, a study of the ignition physics of a shear coaxial injector is proposed, in which the flow field dynamics and ignition transients will be observed through a visually accessible combustion chamber. The main …