Refractory Metals and Advanced Coatings for Radiatively Cooled RDREs

The development of combustion chambers and nozzles for a Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) is currently a difficult endeavor. Some factors contributing to this difficulty are the analytical determination of heat fluxes, limited survivability of existing materials in the environment of an RDRE, and the design complexity of regenerative cooling necessitated by the materials limits. The team of Agile Space Industries and MIT plan to holistically address these challenges during the Phase I effort, where RDRE thermal analysis codes developed at MIT will be adopted by the Agile Space Industries team. These codes will inform the design of a combustion chamber and nozzle for an RDRE injector already designed by UCLA with assistance from The Aerospace Corporation who will be subcontractors to the effort. To eliminate the need for regenerative cooling, the Agile Space Industries team will demonstrate the suitability of higher temperature refractory metal alloy for the metal laser powder bed fusion (LB-PBF) additive manufacturing process. This effort will yield the design of an RDRE manufactured using Niobium C129Y, establishing the basis for continued full-scale product development during a Phase II.