Advanced Materials and Cooling Schemes for Rocket Engine Combustion Chambers

Proposed enhancement of the thermal control of rocket engine combustion chambers is achieved by implementing advanced high thermal conductivity, light weight polycapillary materials (APM) to provide improved transpiration cooling of the walls and/ordevelop efficient ablative chamber wall material. MER Corporation has developed the method of fabricating metal and/or ceramic APM characterized by: oriented structure of pores/microchannels with sizes varying from tens of microns and up; stability oftheir size along the length at high length-to-diameter ratio (>1000); controlled distribution of pores/microchannels over the various shape cross-section; possibility of using materials of which highly porous products are rarely produced by conventionalmethods. This method involves commonly available equipment and allows to inexpensively produce a variety of APM structures at reasonable cost. During the proposed Phase I effort, MER will team with Aerojet to identify current status of combustion chamber material properties and cooling approaches, and evaluate the feasibility of using APM for transpiration cooling of higher performing hydrogen/oxygen rocket engine combustion chambers as well as using APM for developing high efficiency ablativematerials/liners for chamber walls. Based on evaluation results viable conceptual designs will be formulated.