Development and evaluation of Throttled Hydrogen Peroxide/Kerosene Bipropellant engine for landing vehicles

Abstract

Several governmental agencies and private companies have recently gained interest in landing technologies to prepare exploration programs for the Moon and other celestial bodies. For this purpose, a hydrogen peroxide/kerosene liquid bipropellant thruster could propose an alternative to conventional toxic propellants. However, recent findings have highlighted the difficulty of using pulse throttling for lander demonstrators, while research using continuous throttling has mostly been performed on hybrid propulsion using hydrogen peroxide. In this thesis, a hydrogen peroxide/kerosene bipropellant thruster was controlled using a variable area cavitating venturi valve in the oxidizer feeding line. Monopropellant tests using hydrogen peroxide were performed to determine throttling instability, and then bipropellant tests were performed to gain insight into the behavior of such thrusters in transient conditions. Finally, experiments were performed to replicate the trajectory of a lander demonstrator.