Flight-Weight Manifolding for Actively-Cooled SiC/SiC Composite Thrust Chamber

Hyper-Therm recently demonstrated producing the world?s first actively-cooled, ceramic-matrix composite thrust chambers for liquid rocket propulsion systems. Using a near-net shape manufacturing technique, these monocoque components were fabricated with an annular array of internal cooling channel passages and are perhaps the most geometrically complex and enabling propulsion devices ever produced from continuous fiber-reinforced ceramic composites. To evaluate their performance, a non-flight-weight liquid hydrogen coolant manifold assembly was designed and fabricated to interface the composite thrust chambers to a test stand NASA GRC for ground-test firing. These devices are currently on the stand undergoing hot-fire testing using an energetic mixture ratio of liquid oxygen/ hydrogen (LOX/LH) propellants. In order to exploit the significant potential of these actively-cooled propulsion devices, it is recognized that flight-weight manifolding is key to the success and future utilization of this technology. The objective of this Phase I program is to demonstrate the feasibility of developing a flight-weight regenerative coolant manifold system for the actively-cooled ceramic composite thrust chamber. Following the experimental development of a reactive ceramic-to-metal braze-joining method, a prototype axisymmetric composite heat exchanger with integrated metallic toroidal manifolds will be fabricated and delivered to NASA MSFC for evaluation.