Hybrid rocket textbook | Hybrid engine discussion | Forum

Today I collected a copy of "Fundamentals of Hybrid Rocket Combustion and Propulsion" from my university library, a 600+ page long textbook on hybrid rocketry.

I've only had a quick look through so far, but it looks fairly helpful.  It has a table in it with many different common fuel-oxidiser combinations and for each one the sealevel specific impulse and the ideal fuel-oxidiser ratio, which is a helpful thing to have.

Obviously I cannot just scan the entire book and upload it for us to use without risking copyright persecution, but I can rewrite parts of it in my own words safely.  I plan to create a Wiki page for hybrid rocket information, in the spirit of my proposal here.  However, this might be relatively slow work since (i) the book isn't due back at the library until March – because I'm a postgraduate student I get a very long loan time – so I'm not going to rush with reading it (ii) I'm trying to reduce the time I spend on CSTART and (iii) OHKLA propulsion is not where I want be expending most of my effort.

In light of this, if any of those of you who want to do want to work on the OHKLA engine stuff (rpulkrabek in particular) have any questions about hybrid rockets that you want an answer to quickly to help your work along (like temperatures, velocities, pressures etc. for certain things), feel free to post in this thread or PM and I'll try to look up the answer for quickly, or at least make sure that the next time I spend time writing up hybrid rocket stuff for the Wiki I focus on your question.

So you have more of a idea of what is in the book and what kinds of questions I may be able to answer, here are the sections of the book:

1. Overview and History of Hybrid Rocket Propulsion
2. Review of Solid-Fuel Regression Rate Behavior in Classical and Nonclassical Hybrid Rocket Motors
3. Solid-Fuel Pyrolysis Phenomena and Regression Rate, Part 1: Mechanisms
4. Solid-Fuel Pyrolysis Phenomena and Regression Rate, Part 2: Measurement Techniques
5. Analytical Models for Hybrid Rockets
6. Vortex Injection Hybrid Rockets
7. High-Speed Flow Effects in Hybrid Rockets
8. Computational Fluid Dyanmics Modeling of Hybrid Rocket Flowfields
9. Combustion Instability and Transient Behavior in Hybrid Rocket Motors
10. Metals, Energetic Additives, and Special Biners Used in Solid Fuels for Hybrid Rockets
11. Hydrogen Peroxide, Hydroxyl Ammonium Nitrate, and Other Storable Oxidizers
12. Similarity and Scaling Effects in Hybrid Rocket Motors
13. Large-Scale Hybrid Motor Testing
14. Flight Testing of Hybrid-Powered Vehicles
15. Challenges of Hybrid Rocket Propulsion in the 21st Century

Hopefully this turns out to be a useful resource for us.

Those of you enrolled at universities, or whose local university allows public access to the library: I highly recommend you check your library for good space related books sometime.  I was really surprised at the huge range of technical space related books my library had, even though Australia has practically no space industry at all.  You might be able to find some really valuable resources there.