Hydrazine Thickness Measurement by Neutron Radiography at a Catalyst Bed during Operation

INTRODUCTION: Neutron radiography can reveal invisible objects such as fluids like X-ray technology. We tried to apply this technology to observe a thruster, which is one of the key sub-components for spacecraft using fluids as propellants. Last year, we directly observed the physical and chemical phenomena occurring within the catalyst bed of the mono-propellant thruster using neutron radiography at the Kyoto University Research Reactor, but lacked any reference to understand quantitatively the dynamic behavior of the hydrazine acquired by neutron radiography. Thus, the purpose of this study is to estimate the macroscopic of the hydrazine for thermal neutrons and then analyze the dynamic behavior of the injected hydrazine quantitatively.