Advanced Injector Designs for Hydrocarbon Liquid Rocket Engine Components

Combustion instability is one of the greatest development risks for liquid propellant engines. In developing a stable injector design, the risks arise from a variety of sources - limited modeling capabilities, poor scalability and the high cost of appropriate component test facilities. Sierra Engineering Inc. believes that much of the empirical data on the injection element's driving characteristics can be obtained using a single full-sized injection element in combustion chamber of the same diameter as the full-scale chamber. Our proposed Phase II validation effort covers the critical design, fabrication and testing of a single-element stability tester. Test data, generated in relevant operating environments, will be used to anchor stability model inputs, thereby limiting extrapolation while applying the models to large-scale engines.