Student research team develops hybrid rocket engine

Date:
August 27, 2020
Source:
University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering
Summary:
In a year defined by obstacles, a student rocket team
persevered. Working together across five time zones, they
successfully designed a hybrid rocket engine that uses paraffin
and a novel nitrous oxide-oxygen mixture called Nytrox.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
In a year defined by obstacles, a University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign student rocket team persevered. Working together across
five time zones, they successfully designed a hybrid rocket engine that
uses paraffin and a novel nitrous oxide-oxygen mixture called Nytrox. The
team has its sights set on launching a rocket with the new engine at
the 2021 Intercollegiate Rocketry and Engineering Competition.


========================================================================== "Hybrid propulsion powers Virgin Galactic's suborbital tourist spacecraft
and the development of that engine has been challenging. Our students
are now experiencing those challenges first hand and learning how to
overcome them," said faculty adviser to the team Michael Lembeck.

Last year the team witnessed a number of catastrophic failures with hybrid engines utilizing nitrous oxide. The propellant frequently overheated in
the New Mexico desert, where the IREC competition is held. Lembeck said
this motivated the team to find an alternative fuel that could remain
stable at temperature. Nytrox surfaced as the solution to the problem.

As the team began working on the engine this past spring semester,
excitement to conduct hydrostatic testing of the ground oxidizer tank
vessel quickly turned to frustration as the team lacked a safe test
location.

Team leader Vignesh Sella said, "We planned to conduct the test at
the U of I's Willard airport retired jet engine testing facility. But
the Department of Aerospace Engineering halted all testing until safety requirements could be met." Sella said they were disheartened at first,
but rallied by creating a safety review meeting along with another
student rocket group to examine their options.



==========================================================================
"As a result of that meeting, we came up with a plan to move the project forward. The hybrid team rigorously evaluated our safety procedures,
and had our work reviewed by Dr. Dassou Nagassou, the Aerodynamics
Research Lab manager. He became a great resource for us, and a very
helpful mentor." Sella and Andrew Larkey also approached Purdue
University to draw from their extensive experience in the realm of rocket propulsion. They connected with Chris Nielson who is a graduate student
and lab manager at Purdue. They did preliminary over-the-phone design
reviews and were eventually invited to conduct their hydrostatic and
cold-flow testing at Purdue's Zucrow Laboratories, a facility dedicated
to testing rocket propulsion with several experts in the field on-site.

"We sent a few of the members there to scout the location and take notes
before bringing the whole team there for a test," Sella said. "These
meetings, relationships, and advances, although they may sound smooth and
easy to establish, were arduous and difficult to attain. It was a great
relief to us to have the support from the department, a pressure vessel
expert as our mentor, and Zucrow Laboratories available to our team."
The extended abstract, which the team had submitted much earlier to the
AIAA Propulsion and Energy conference, assumed the engine would have
been assembled and tested before the documentation process began. Team
leader Vignesh Sella said they wanted to document hard test data but
had to switch tactics in March.

The campus move to online-only classes also curtailed all in-person
activities, including those of registered student organizations like ISS.

"As the disruptions caused by COVID-19 required us to work remotely,
we pivoted the paper by focusing on documenting the design processes
and decisions we made for the engine. This allowed us to work remotely
and complete a paper that wasn't too far from the original abstract. Our members, some of whom are international, met on Zoom and Discord to work
on the paper together virtually, over five time zones," Sella said.



========================================================================== Sella said he and the entire team are proud of what they have accomplished
and are "returning this fall with a vengeance." The Illinois Space
Society is a technical, professional, and educational outreach student organization at the U of I in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. The society consists of 150 active members. The hybrid rocket engine team
consisted of 20 members and is one of the five technical projects within
ISS. The project began in 2013 with the goal of constructing a subscale
hybrid rocket engine before transitioning to a full-scale engine. The
subscale hybrid rocket engine was successfully constructed and hot fired
in the summer of 2018, yielding the positive test results necessary to
move onto designing and manufacturing a full-scale engine.

"After the engine completes its testing, the next task will be integrating
the engine into the rocket vehicle," said Sella "This will require fitting
key flight hardware components within the geometric constraints of a
rocket body tube and structurally securing the engine to the vehicle."
In June 2021, the rocket will be transported to Spaceport America in
Truth or Consequences for its first launch.

This work was supported by the U of I Student Sustainability
Committee, the Office of Undergraduate Research, and the Illinois
Space Society. Technical support was provided by the Department of
Aerospace Engineering, the School of Chemical Sciences Machine Shop,
Zucrow Laboratories and Christopher D. Nilsen at Purdue University,
Stephen A. Whitmore of Utah State University, and Dassou Nagassou of
the Aerodynamics Research Laboratory at Illinois.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Illinois_Grainger_College_of_Engineering.

Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Vignesh Sella, Andrew Larkey, Abhiraj Majumder, Avinash Rao,
Zavar Abidi,
Nicolas Rasmont, Aasheesh Randeo, Miron Liu, Avery Moore, Michael F.

Lembeck. Development of a Nytrox-Paraffin Hybrid Rocket
Engine. 2020 AIAA Propulsion & Energy conference proceedings,
2020 DOI: 10.2514/6.2020-3729 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200827130610.htm

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