A Reliable Method for Predicting the Specific Impulse of Chemical Propellants

Abstract

The specific impulse (Isp) is an important performance parameter that describes energy efficiency of propellant combustion and is intimately related to the rocket engine thrust. In this study, it was possible by using only two variables, i.e., the heat of reaction (Q) and the number of moles of gaseous reaction products per gram of propellant (Ng) calculated according to [H2O-CO2] arbitrary decomposition assumption and constants derived from the ISPBKW code to predict the specific impulse of more than 165 compositions belonging to virtually all classes of propellants such as monopropellants, single-base, double-base, triple-base, and cast modified double-base (CMDB) propellants, pseudo-propellants, composite propellants, liquid mono- and bipropellants, and finally hybrid propellants. Further analysis reveals that for C-H-N-O containing propellants, the specific impulse values estimated using the new method should not deviate more than 5% from the output of the ISPBKW thermochemical code.