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Proposal For Rocket Nozzle Development

This proposal requests one Honors Program student to work with an MS student and professors Carpenter and Murray on optimizing the design of a hybrid rocket motor. The student would design solid fuel geometries through computer-aided drafting and testing, which involves conducting rocket motor firings and analyzing the resulting data on fuel burn rate and thrust. The goal is to provide inexpensive access to low earth orbit with an environmentally friendly rocket motor.

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rahul parmar
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135 views2 pages

Proposal For Rocket Nozzle Development

This proposal requests one Honors Program student to work with an MS student and professors Carpenter and Murray on optimizing the design of a hybrid rocket motor. The student would design solid fuel geometries through computer-aided drafting and testing, which involves conducting rocket motor firings and analyzing the resulting data on fuel burn rate and thrust. The goal is to provide inexpensive access to low earth orbit with an environmentally friendly rocket motor.

Uploaded by

rahul parmar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Honors Research Project Proposal Form

Submission: An electronic copy of this form must be emailed to [email protected]


with a copy to [email protected] by 5:00 PM on Monday, November 6, 2006.

Project Title: Hybrid Rocket Motor Development


Name: William R. Murray
Contact Info:
Phone Number: 6-2414
Email Address: [email protected]
Department: Mechanical Engineering

College: Engineering
In a recent project funded by the California Central Coast Research
Description of Partnership (C3RP), the hybrid rocket motor facility in the Mechanical
the project: Engineering Department was upgraded to state-of-the-art research
standards. Unlike typical liquid rocket engines or solid rocket motors,
hybrid rocket motors use a solid fuel and a liquid or gaseous oxidizer.
The propellant combination chosen for this hybrid is identical to that used
by Burt Rutan in SpaceShipOne: hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene
(HTPB) as the fuel and liquid nitrous oxide (N2O) as the oxidizer. Not
only are these compounds inherently safe and inexpensive, they are
relatively non-polluting: the combustion products are water vapor, carbon
dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, and some carbon monoxide. For this hot
flow environment, the rocket nozzles (aerospike nozzles and advanced
bell-shaped nozzles) are being fabricated from solid carbon, carbon fiber,
and/or ablative phenolics.

With this new hybrid rocket motor facility now in place, we would like an
Honors Program undergraduate to work with the MS student who is
continuing to refine and optimize the design of our hybrid rocket motor.
In conjunction with our MS student, and under the direct supervision of
Profs. Thomas W. Carpenter and William R. Murray, the Honors Program
student would design solid fuel geometries to optimize combustion
performance in the rocket motor. This optimization process will require
iterative cycles of design and testing. Geometric design of the fuel will
involve computer-aided drafting and solid modeling. Testing will involve
conducting static (ground-based) hot firings of the rocket motor and
subsequent data analysis to determine fuel burn rate, oxidizer flow rate,
fuel to oxidizer ratio, and resultant thrust.

Not only will this testing lead to publishable results in the short term, this
testing will play an important role in achieving the overall long-term goal
of this project: to provide inexpensive access to low earth orbit with an
environmentally acceptable, or relatively "green", rocket motor.
Inexpensive access to low earth orbit would open the door for a new
scientific revolution because many worthy experiments never reach space
due to the currently prohibitive cost of launching satellites.

The science of rocket propulsion is inherently multidisciplinary. The core


Description of technologies of rocket propulsion are the thermochemistry of combustion,
the gas dynamics and compressible flow, design with temperature resistant
interdisciplinary materials, and real-time instrumentation for measuring temperature, mass
nature of the flow, pressure, and force. In addition, our advanced rocket nozzles
project:
require computer controlled mechanisms that function in the hot-flow
environment of the rocket motor. All of these technologies are used on a
daily basis in our research on developing advanced rocket nozzles with
thrust vectoring and throttling capabilities. At present, six MS students,
three undergraduate students working on three separate senior projects,
and three professors are actively involved in this overall project, which
includes cold-flow nozzle studies, combustion chamber design, and hot-
flow nozzle studies.
Number of One (1) Honors Program student is currently needed, preferably a
Honors Mechanical Engineering student. If this proves successful, we may
students request more students in the future.
needed, and
their majors:

Is there a url for the proposed project? No, not at this time.

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