Experimental and Numerical Study on Temperature Distribution of Infrared Heater Used for Curing Solid Propellant Slurries

The combustion rate of solid propellants is strongly influenced by its shape and geometry. The use of conventional casting and forming methods to produce complex-shaped solid propellants is tedious and requires skilled manpower intervention, which greatly increases the production time and costs. Now a day, the application of the additives manufacturing process simplifies the production of complex-shaped parts from the slurries composition, but the curing process of the parts is still carried out by placing the printed slurry in the furnace with uniform heating for a long time. To shorten the extended curing time, layer by layer curing scheme with curved ceramic infrared heater (FTE serious) was implemented in this study. The capability of the heater to produce uniform temperature distribution over the printed part was measured with thermal camera (i.e., FLIR duo r). Moreover, ANSYS Fluent software was used to develop a numerical model based on the control volume method and to simulate the temperature distribution of the part. The simulation results and the thermal imaging measurement value showed good agreement.