Back un the early days of Rocket Science, we were trying to ignite a
small gas generator combustor to drive the turbo pumps of the main
liquid oxygen and JP4 fuel lines of the Jupiter, Redstone, Thor and
Atlas liquid engines.
Once combustion was started, the burning was self-maintaned. A trial
test using semiconductor tipped aircraft spark plugs was tried. The
semiconductor material completely filled the spark plug end from the
center electrode to the side wall, and created a surface combusiton to
ignite a flammable mixture. Although it worked well, it was way too
complex for it's single use life. We settled on small electric squib
ignited solid propellant flare on a high pressure header connector.
Sometimes you just don't need complexity, and the genius is in NOT
making something more complicated than it needs to be.
Steve
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Steve Laifman
Editor - TigersUnited.com
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