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Abstract
With the current trend of aerospace organizations towards developing green monopropellant, the key priority is to eliminate the use of highly dangerous monopropellants, such as hydrazine. In that vein, one of the best candidates to replace hydrazine is a monopropellant known as AF-M315E. AF-M315E was developed by the Air Force and is currently being advanced by NASA and private corporations for use on various satellite platforms, with NASA looking to launch a test satellites part of their Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM), Raytheon providing support on the Missile Defense Agency's Network Centric Airborne Defense Element (NCADE) program and Department of Defense missile programs.. While there has been testing done by different organization such as NASA and the U.S. Air Force, the decomposition of AF-M315E and the effects of the catalyst in such process are scarce. The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and Center for Space Engineering Technology Research (cSETR) has decided to analyze the decomposition products and the effects of catalyst on the decomposition process. This thesis discusses the design, construction, and operation of a test platform to capture and analyze the decomposition products of AF-M315E to characterize its combustion process and optimize the development of future AF-M315E thrusters.
