Manufacture of Ablative Divergent Liners for Large Solid Rocket Motor Flex Nozzles

Solid rocket motor generates thrust by converting pressure energy to kinetic energy of propulsion in the nozzle. The structural steel members of nozzle should be protected from hot gases by highly erosion resistant thermal liners. Ablative composite liners made up of rayon carbon fabric and phenolic resin. Divergent liner thickness should be as minimum os possible at the same time, it should be more erosion resistant. The erosion resistant due to hot gases can be increased by fabricating the liner in such a way that the flame only touches the edge of the composite ply of liner and liner has more density. This can be achieved by tape winding of composite prepreg tapes at zero degrees on tapered metal mandrel using tape winding machine followed by autoclave curing. This paper gives the details of prepreg, tape winding, autoclave curing and NDT of the ablative liner.