• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.18-21
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• 2011

In this study, basic research on the pressure control using driven pintle of modulatable thruster is presented. For this purpose, pintle thruster and pintle shape was developed. The actuator model was selected by calculating pintle load using Fluent software. Preliminary unsteady experimental results show that huge pressure oscillation is occurred as the pintle approach toward nozzle wall. From the preliminary experimental results, we could see possibility of pressure control of the modulatable thruster.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.275-278
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• 2010

By changing the nozzle throat area during the operation, thrust of a pintle thruster can be adjusted easily such as a liquid propulsion. In this paper, numerical analysis was carried out for SNECMA's pintle thruster with different pintle shapes. Flow field and aerodynamic load changed drastically with pintle shapes. Bore in the pintle decreased aerodynamic load significantly.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.43 no.12
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• pp.1071-1078
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• 2015

Numerical computations were performed to investigate the effects of pintle stroke, altitude, and bore on the performance of an external pintle thruster. Results show that under-expansion flow occurs always, independent of pintle stroke. An external pintle thruster shows good performance in that it is capable of good amount of thrust control, while aerodynamic loads are increased due to shock waves on the pintle support. When altitude is increased to 20 km, the nozzle exit velocity, Mach number, thrust as well as aerodynamic loads are increased. Bore increases aerodynamic load 5.9%, and therefore pintle shape without bore is preferred for lower aerodynamic load of a pintle in order to actuate the pintle.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.153-156
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• 2011

Steady state experiment was carried out for modulatable thruster applications, with four different pintles. Results show that thrust can be modulated by changing nozzle throat area with pintle penetration. However, effect of pintle shape on the thruster performance is yet to be concluded.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.24-28
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• 2012

In this paper, 2-D experiment and steady-state computational fluid analysis were conducted for measuring the hear transfer coefficient of pintle type controllable thruster in high pressure and temperature. In case of 2-D experiment, transient liquid crystal technique was used for measuring heat transfer coefficient for the 2-D pintle model. The experimental result was used to validate the CFD result. The CFD results well predicted the heat transfer coefficient on the pintle surface except the nozzle downstream region, where the results by CFD was higher than experimental results. The CFD results were also compared with the result by Bartz equation and the it was shown that the Bartz equation overestimated the heat transfer coefficient on the nozzle throat as much as 80%.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.78-84
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• 2020

The performance of pintle thruster is analyzed by using the pintle thruster performance analysis model which integrating the element models introduced in Part I. To verify the performance analysis, the results of the developed program are compared with the experimental data of kerosene/hydrogen peroxide liquid pintle thrusters. Based on the results, the characteristics of the pintle thruster are analyzed. The sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the effect of thruster shape and operation parameters on performance characteristics using both OAT and scatter plot methods. The four performance parameters such as droplet diameter, film flow rate, O/F ratio, and nozzle throat diameter are evaluated to investigate their effects on characteristic speed, combustor pressure, and specific thrust.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.48 no.9
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• pp.703-709
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• 2020

Pintle injector is known to have been adopted as injector of Lunar Module Descent Engine (LMDE) and contributed to success of the Apollo program and recently used in merlin engine. In this study, 500N Lab-Scale pintle injector thruster was manufactured and the combustion experiment with LOx/GCH4 was conducted. However, the proto-type thruster was showed some problems, such as low combustion efficiency and melting of pintle tip. To solve these problems, the flow guide in pintle tip was suggested through the CFD simulation. After addition of flow guide module, the combustion efficiency increased and pintle tip did not melt until the end of combustion.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.262-267
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• 2012

For DACS system which controls pintle position to change nozzle throat area, one actuator has been used for each modulatable pintle thruster. This ten actuator system drove to complex system structure and complicated control mechanism. In order to overcome this shortcomings, international patents were reviewed, analysed and presented.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.1-9
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• 2017

Numerical computations are performed to investigate the effect of pintle stroke on the performance of an internal pintle thruster. Results show that the thrust control ratio was less than 2% and the aerodynamic load ratio was 22% as the pintle stroke increased. The flow past the nozzle throat rapidly expanding because of the shape of the pintle, and a shock wave was generated. Particularly, at the pintle stroke distance of 4 and 5 mm, the shock wave hit the wall of the nozzle, results in peeling bubbles. Depending on the altitude, the thrust increased and the aerodynamic load decreased, but the difference was as small as 1.5%. In the presence of the bore, the reduction of the pintle tip area resulted in a decrease in aerodynamic load.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.311-317
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• 2015

This paper describes how to apply one-dimensional simulation to predict unsteady state characteristics of the cold-gas pintle thruster. Mass flow rate, chamber pressure, and nozzle exit pressure are key parameters for thrust control. Chamber pressure rose and fell monotonously with the pintle stroke variation, while thrust variation was different from chamber pressure variation. During the forward pintle stroke operation, the thrust value tended to decrease initially and returned to increase when pintle speed and chamber free volume exceed some specified value. Even though one-dimensional simulation has the limitations to predict unsteady state characteristics, it is still useful for initial performance assessment of various thrusters which adopt an altitude compensation nozzle such as a dual-bell nozzle, prior to experiment or numerical analysis.