Studio e ricostruzione delle distribuzioni granulometriche interne al grano in motori a propellente solido

The main purposes of this essay were to investigate in detail the burning rate anomaly phenomenon, also known as "Hump Effect", in solid rocket motors casted in mandrel and the mechanisms at the base of it, as well as the developing of a numeric code, in Matlab environment, in order to obtain a forecasting tool to generate concentration and orientation maps of the particles within the grain. The importance of these analysis is due to the fact that the forecasts of ballistics curves in new motors have to be improved in order to reduce the amount of experimental tests needed for the characterization of their ballistic behavior. This graduate work is divided into two parts. The first one is about bidimensional and tridimensional simulations on z9 motor casting process. The simulations have been carried out respectively with Fluent and Flow 3D. The second one is about the analysis of fluid dynamic data and the developing of numeric codes which give information about the concentration and orientation of particles within the grain based on fluid strain rate information which are extrapolated from CFD software.