Analytical investigation of the dual propellant mode
- Paper ID
IAF-72-10
- author
- company
Technical University Munich
- country
Germany
- year
1972
- abstract
A publication by Salkeld [1] suggests that the performance of a single stage rocket vehicle can be improved using the dual propellant mode, also called mixed propellant mode. This can be described as follows : Given the performance of a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen stage, we assume for the simple case that without any increase of propulsion system mass and without any mass increase for the additional bulkhead, feedlines etc., we can replace part of the hydrogen by for example kerosine, adjusting the oxygen volume as required by the different mixture ratio. Engine performance as measured by exhaust speed shall not be degraded due to the dual propellant capability. This propellant replacement keeps the total propellant mass constant. Tankage mass is corrected for the different propellants. By optimizing the ratio of LOX/Kerosine to LOX/Hydrogen the performance of the dual propellant stage can be better than the performance of the original LOX/Hydrogen version.