Servo-Stabilization of Combustion in Rocket Motors

This paper shows that the combustion in the rocket motor can be stabilized against any value of time lag in combustion by a feedback servo link from a chamber pressure pickup, through an appropriately designed amplifier, to a control capacitance on the propellant feed line. The technique of stability analysis is based upon a combination of the Satche diagram and the Nyquist diagram. For simplicity of calculation, only low-frequency oscillations in monopropellant rocket motors are considered. However, the concept of servo-stabilization and method of analysis are believed to be generally applicable to other cases.