Numerical Study of Catalyst Bed Length and Particle Size Effect on the Monopropellant Thruster Specific Impulse and Thrust

Monopropellant thrusters are very popular in satellite propulsion systems due to their simplicity and reliability. A monopropellant thruster commonly consists of three major components: injector, decomposition chamber and nozzle. Fuel is injected over catalyst bed through an injector and decomposed there instantaneously. The resulting hot gases are expanded through the nozzle section and produce thrust. In this study a Hydrazine monopropellant thruster with Iridium based catalyst bed is analyzed numerically. To this end, one dimensional heat and mass transfer equations are simulated numerically inside the catalyst bed. Since, decomposed gases are not in thermal and chemical equilibrium with catalyst solid particles, two sets of equations are solved for solid and fluid phases (based on the Shankar et al. research). Additionally, a zero-dimension analysis is performed for convergence-divergence nozzle to compute thrust and specific impulse. Using this method, effects of particles size and decomposition chamber length on thruster performance are investigated. The related results indicate that, decreasing the catalyst particles, decreases optimum decomposition chamber length and increases specific impulse.