Advanced Materials and Cooling Schemes for Rocket Engine Combustion Chambers

We will produce and test a flight-type transpiration cooled combustion chamber for high performance, reusable, liquid rocket engines utilizing a novel uniform pore material. The Sierra Engineering design produces a durable, low cost, flight-weighttranspiration cooled liner with integral fluid distribution and structural support hardware. The design will be based upon the rigorous analysis procedure and associated methodology developed under the Phase I project. The Phase I effort also fabricateda transporation cooled combustion chamber barrel segment and applied the design methodology and fabrication technique to a chamber concept for an NK-33 class hydrocarbon booster engine. The Phase II SBIR program shall: l)generate the data necessary toevaluate and improve the design methodology for a wide range of transpiration coolants, 2) demonstrate scale-up of the fabrication techniques from a heavy-weight research scale to a relevant flight-type booster class engine, and 3) produce a commerciallyviable 40 Klbf-class combustion chamber. Transpiration cooled combustion chamber technology has been demonstrated by others at a concept level, but flight weight hardware has never been developed.