Preliminary Surrogate Mixture Models for the Thermophysical Properties of Rocket Propellants RP-1 and RP-2

Published

May 19, 2009

Author(s)

Marcia L. Huber, Eric W. Lemmon, Lisa S. Ott, Thomas J. Bruno

Abstract

We developed surrogate mixture models to represent the thermophysical properties of a two kerosene rocket propellants, RP-1 and RP-2. The surrogates were developed with a procedure that incorporated experimental data for the density, sound speed, viscosity, thermal conductivity and the advanced distillation curves for samples of the two fuels. The surrogate for RP-1 contains four components (α-methyldecalin, n-dodecane, 5-methylnonane, and heptylcyclohexane), and the surrogate for RP-2 contains five components (α-methyldecalin, n-dodecane, 5-methylnonane, 2,4-dimethylnonane, and heptylcyclohexane). Comparisons with experimental data demonstrate that the models are able to represent the density, sound speed, viscosity and thermal conductivity of both fuels to within (at a 95 % confidence level) 0.4 %, 2 %, 2 %, and 4 %, respectively. The volatility behavior, as indicated by the advanced distillation curves, is reproduced to within 0.5 %.

Citation

Energy and Fuels

Volume

23

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

distillation curve, Helmholtz free energy, rocket propellant, RP-1, RP-2, surrogate

Citation

Huber, M. , Lemmon, E. , Ott, L. and Bruno, T. (2009), Preliminary Surrogate Mixture Models for the Thermophysical Properties of Rocket Propellants RP-1 and RP-2, Energy and Fuels, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=900238 (Accessed October 12, 2025)