AIAA-2015-3867 Effect of Water and Humidity on Hypergolic Propellant Ignition Delay
II. Background A. Hypergolic Ignition Reactions For hypergolic ignition to take place in a rocket engine, heat must be released quickly upon the mixing of the fuel and oxidizing agents. This implies that, of all the possible physical and chemical reactions that may take place, there must be some reactions that liberate heat in such large quantities and so rapidly that the effect of any reactions that absorb heat are effectively masked. The hypergolic ignition process with nitric acid can be divided to three major steps liquid phase reactions, gas phase reactions, and high temperature reactions These steps are shown for MMH reacting with WFNA in Figure 1. Downloaded by PURDUE UNIVERSITY on July 21, 2017 | http://arc.aiaa.org | DOI: 10.2514/6.2015-3867