Combustion Chambers for Use with AF-M315E Monopropellant

The use of AF-M315E, a non-toxic monopropellant developed by the Air Force, promises substantial performance improvement and reduced cost compared with legacy hydrazine-based systems. Before the technology can be widely adopted by the user community, combustion chambers are needed that can tolerate the harsh combustion environment created by the propellant. Ultramet’s flight-qualified iridium-lined rhenium (Ir/Re) combustion chambers represent the state of the art in radiation-cooled chambers for high-performance bipropellants (NTO/MMH and NTO/N2H4), and the long-term use of Ir/Re has also been demonstrated with the monopropellant LMP-103S. Ultramet’s oxide-lined Ir/Re (Ox-Ir/Re) chambers were developed for extremely hot and/or corrosive propellants (e.g. stoichiometric O2/H2), and a variant was developed specifically for use with the AF-M315 family of propellants. In this project, Ultramet will perform long-duration hot-fire testing of an Ox-Ir/Re chamber with AF-M315E to demonstrate the suitability of this material system for long-duration Air Force missions.