Development and research testing of a low thrust on gaseous-propellant rocket engine chamber

Abstract

The article presents preliminary results of the development and research testing of a rocket engine chamber with a thrust of 100 N operating on fuel components: gaseous oxygen-gaseous hydrogen, designed to be used as the main engine of a small upper stage for launching a payload weighing up to 150 kg into target orbits. The main features of the engine chamber are its fabrication by selective laser melting from 12X18N10T steel powder and its regenerative cooling with gaseous hydrogen. Calculation and experiments confirmed the possibility of regenerative cooling of the chamber in the nominal mode. In addition, the current results of the development of a technique for optical recording of the process of structural material removal from the chamber during tests using different optical filters are presented. It is shown that there is a correlation between the brightness of the obtained frames and the hydrogen flow rate. It is also shown that the afterburning of the removed material particles, in contrast to high thrust engines, occurs mainly in the tail of the jet.

Keywords

• low thrust rocket engine
• gaseous fuel components
• regenerative cooling
• optical diagnostics