Rockets internal ballistics

In sending a rocket into the sky we are calling into action several laws of physics and chemistry, and the same laws apply whether the application is a small firework rocket weighing a few ounces or a solid propellant booster for the space shuttle containing around 300 tons of propellant. These fundamental processes may be conveniently divided into internal ballistics and external ballistics. 

BALLISTICS (INTERNAL) The science of internal ballistics is concerned with the propulsion of a projectile such as a shell along the tube of a mortar by gas pressure acting on the base of the shell, or, in the case of rockets, by the backward exhaust of the gas jet. 

Internal Ballistics of Barrel Weapons and of Solid Propellant Rockets (Vnutrenniya Ballistika Stvol nykh Sistem i Porokhovykh Raket). Title of the book by M. E. Serebriakov, GosNauch —TekhlzdatOboronghiz, Moskva (1962), 3rd edition, 703 pp... 

Nekrassoff, Contract NOrd 10260(1954), Washington, DC, p22 13)Anon, Exterior Ballistics , USMilAcad,West Point,NY(1949)(Pamphlet) 14)R.N.Wimpress, Interior Ballistics of Solid Fuel Rockets ,McGraw-Hill,NY(1950) 15)J. Comer, Theory of Internal Ballistics of Guns ,... 

Wimpress, "Internal Ballistics of Solid-Fuel Rockets , McGraw-Hill, NY(1950), 16-28 12)B.L. 

R. N. Wimpress, Internal Ballistics of Solid-Fuel Rockets, New York McGraw-Hill, 1950. 

Another key issue is the sensitivity of the mass flux or burning rate and surface temperature to the independent variables, P, To, qr. The sensitivity of burning rate to pressure and initial temperature is obviously important for internal ballistics and rocket motor performance prediction for quasi-static operation. The sensitivity of surface temperature is not quite as obvious but is related to the unsteady combustion behavior through Zeldovich-Novozhilov (ZN) theory. The sensitivity parameters are derivatives of the steady equations as defined in the nomenclature. Equation (15) or (16) can be differentiated with respect to initial temperature (To), pressure (Dg), and radiative flux (qr) to give... 

The combustion of the propellants is a stable process that proceeds in parallel layers on the surface of a propellant even at very high values of external pressure, up to a few thousand bars. The investigation of the influence of the external pressure on the combustion rate is especially important in the field of internal ballistics of weapons and solid-propellant rocket motors. It has been shown experimentally that the dependence of the combustion rate (r) on the external pressure (p) may be expressed by the following equation ... 

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