• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.120-130
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• 2013

A study was conducted for the performance characteristics of methane taking recently the limelight in the world as a next-generation propellant, with the survey for state of the art in the development of methane/oxygen rocket engine being accompanied. Liquid methane as a rocket fuel has the favorable characteristics such as non-toxic, low cost, regenerative cooling capability, and potential for in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). The combination of liquid methane and liquid oxygen also provides the excellent performance including high specific impulse and low system mass. For these reasons, many researches have been actively carried out on the methane/oxygen engine, nevertheless, its technology readiness level is not that high enough just yet. Therefore, it is judged that it is the time to mitigate the technical gap with the space technology of advanced countries through a swift onset of the development of methane rocket engine.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.347-350
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• 2006

The rocket grade hydrogen peroxide has been widely used as a monopropellant in propulsion systems. In the present paper, we described an experimental study of a catalytic reactor that employs two stage catalyst beds to enhance the low temperature performance of the reactor. $K_2MnO_4$ was chosen as the catalyst for the initial stage of the reactor bed for its superior behavior in the low temperature regime. LSC was used for the catalyst of the second stage of the reactor. The gas generator with combined catalyst beds was built and tested to exhibit high decomposition efficiency over 90% and successful cold-start characteristics.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2020

In this study, a configuration design of a CH₄/LOx small rocket engine was made and test system was established for the performance evaluation. A coaxial swirl injector was chosen because of its remarkable atomization performance and low combustion instability. Three aspect ratios for the combustion chamber configuration, i.e., 1.5, 1.8, and 2.1 were also set for the comparison of the combustion efficiency. The reliability of the thrust measurement rig was enhanced by pre-and post-calibration process. From the preliminary ground hot-firing test, the measured thrust and specific impulse values were 89.2 N and 181.8 s, respectively, which were 21.6% lower than the ideal values. In addition, the efficiency of characteristic velocity was measured as 84.2%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.336-339
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• 2011

Hot-fire test facility is one of the most important infrastructure for thruster development and evaluation. During the past three years, Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) and Hanwha Corporation have successfully performed the construction of hot-fire test facility for medium-scale monopellant thruster to the maximum 200N thrust level. In general, thruster hot-firing test should be performed in vacuum conditions to simulate space environment. The hot-fire test facility is divided into three subsystems, vacuum system, propellant supply system and data measurement & control system. The goal of this facility is to extend the capability from small thruster for satellite mission to medium-scale thruster for launch vehicle and lunar mission. In this paper, the progress and overview for thruster hot-fire test facility was introduced and test results were also presented.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.674-682
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• 2003

Ship autonomous navigation is designated as what computerizes mental faculties possessed of navigation experts, which are building navigation plans, grasping the situation, forecasting the fluctuation, and coping with the situation. An autonomous navigation system, which consists of several subsystems such as navigation system, a collision avoidance system, several data fusion systems, and a motion control system, is based on an intelligent control architecture for the sake of integrating the systems. The motion control system, which is one of the most essential system in autonomous navigation system, controls its propulsion and steering gears to move the ship satisfying its hydrodynamic characteristics. This paper is the study on the ship movement control system and its implementation which are totally developed and run on virtual-world system. Receiving the high-level control values such as a waypoint presented from the collision avoidance system, the motion control system generates them to low-level control values for propulsion and steering devices. In the paper, we develop a ship motion controller using Oldenburger's theory based on mathematical fundamentals, and simulate it with various scenarios in order to verify its performance.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.8-15
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• 2018

The geostationary satellite uses a liquid apogee engine, to obtain a required velocity increment to enter a geostationary orbit. However, as the liquid apogee engine operates in the vacuum, a considerable disbursement of exhaust plume flow, from the liquid apogee engine can trigger a backflow. As this backflow may possibly collide with the satellite directly, it can cause adverse effects such as surface contamination, thermal load, and altitude disturbance, that can generate performance reduction of the geostationary satellite. So, this study investigated exhaust plume behavior of 400 N grade liquid apogee engine numerically. To analyze exhaust plume behavior in vacuum condition, the DSMC (Direct Simulation Monte Carlo) method based on Boltzmann equation is used. As a result, thermal fluid characteristics of exhaust plume such as temperature and number density, are observed.