Designing and Fabricating a Vortex Aerospike Rocket Engine
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v11i4.3287Keywords:
Aerospike, Vortex, Cooling Method, Rocket EngineAbstract
On average, 51% of a rocket engine’s weight is in the cooling system, so finding an
engine design that would drastically reduce the engine's weight, complexity, and production cost
would be extremely beneficial. Small one-stage rockets will be the main method for smaller
organizations to reach orbit shortly. The engine must be efficient at sea level and in space to
achieve this. Since the start of spaceflight in the 1960s, many innovations on the typical rocket
engine have been theorized, but few have been adopted. This project takes two innovations
previously theorized and tested, vortex cooling and aerospike nozzle, and combines them in a
proof of concept prototype. First, the prototype was designed in Computer-Aided-Design and
then validated in a Compusonal-Fluid-Dynamic simulation. Next, the design was fabricated out
of mostly hardware store materials. The custom nozzle design was made through
lost-PLA-casting. Many tests were conducted with this prototype, and 4 data points were
collected: nozzle temperature, combustion chamber temperature, chamber pressure, and thrust.
The data collected showed the success of the vortex cooling method, as the chamber temperature
was much cooler than the nozzle temperature. The engine's success as a whole was validated by
the thrust data. This project shows that a vortex aerospike design is a viable and useful idea. A
functioning rocket engine can be created relatively inexpensively and with widely available parts
and proves that departing from typical rocket engine design can lead to beneficial findings.
Downloads
References or Bibliography
Augousti, A. T., Baker, A., & Marlow, J.-J. (2018). Design and test firing of a dual bidirectional double vortex bipropellant rocket engine. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1065, 262002. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1065/26/262002
Dakka, S., & Dennison, O. (2021). Numerical analysis of aerospike engine nozzle performance at Various Truncation lengths. International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace. doi:10.15394/ijaaa.2021.1601
Eldhose E., Surag A., Prashanth B., "Design and Fabrication of Vortex Cooled Liquid Rocket Engine", International Journal Of Advanced Research in Basic Engineering Sciences and Technology (IJARBEST), VOLUME 3,SPECIAL ISSUE 24 - MARCH 2017, pp.956-963.
Eilers, S., Matthew, W., & Whitmore, S. (2010). Analytical and experimental evaluation of Aerodynamic thrust Vectoring on an AEROSPIKE NOZZLE. 46th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit. doi:10.2514/6.2010-6964
Gaglani, R. (2017). Simulation of swirling flow through nozzles for a bidirectional vortex rocket engine (thesis). (B. Maicke, Ed.).
Herman, K., & Crimp, F. W. (1961). Performance of plug-type rocket exhaust nozzles. ARS Journal, 31(1), 18-23. doi:10.2514/8.5373
Johnson, G. R., Thompson, H., & Hoffman, J. D. (1974). Design of maximum thrust plug nozzles with variable inlet geometry. Computers & Fluids, 2(2), 173-190. doi:10.1016/0045-7930(74)90012-7
Korte, J. J., Salas, A. O., Dunn, H. J., Alexandrov, N. M., Follett, W. W., Orient, G. E., & Hadid, A. H. (1997). Multidisciplinary approach to aerospike nozzle design.
Kumar, K. N., Gopalsamy, M., Antony, D., Krishnaraj, R., Viswanadh, C. B., & Lyle, J. L. (2017). Design and optimization of aerospike Nozzle using CFD. 2017 First International Conference on Recent Advances in Aerospace Engineering (ICRAAE). doi:10.1109/icraae.2017.8297246
Li, G., Yu, N., & Lu, Q. (2013). Design and simulation of gas oxygen/methane vortex cooling thrust chamber. 64th International Astronautical Congress. doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.1173.0005
Mustafa, A. T., Al-Kayiem, H. H., & Gilani, S. I. (2013). A review of the vortex engine. The Sustainable City VIII. https://doi.org/10.2495/sc130772
Muwaaz, S. A., & Shaik, N. (2016). Design and Numerical Flow Analysis of Expansion Deflection Nozzle. International Journal of Engineering Development and Research, 4(2), 1081-1094. doi:20-4-92
Numa, Nadia M. (2015) Computational analyses of combustive vortex flows in liquid rocket engines. McNair Scholars Research Journal: Vol. 2, Article 2.
Rao, G. V. (1961). Recent developments in rocket nozzle configurations. ARS Journal, 31(11), 1488-1494. doi:10.2514/8.5837
Rommel, T., Hagemann, G., Schley, C., Kriille, G., & Manski, D. (1995). Plug nozzle
flowfield calculations for SSTO applications. 31st Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit. doi:10.2514/6.1995-2784
Swathi, G., Sandeep, C. S., Snigdha, M., Sravanthi, G., & Govardhan, D. (2017). Three dimensional computational flow simulation of truncated aerospike nozzle considering different plug lengths. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 10(13), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.17485/ijst/2017/v10i13/111909
Trinh, H., Bullard, D., Kopicz, C., & Michaels, S. (2003). Evaluation of impinging stream vortex chamber concepts for liquid rocket engine applications. 39th AIAA/ASME/SAE ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2003-4476
Vortex rocket engine. (2008). Retrieved October 20, 2021, from https://www.celestialmechanics.co.uk/vortex.html.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Copyright (c) 2022 Cayden Shaffer; Michael Hairston
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright holder(s) granted JSR a perpetual, non-exclusive license to distriute & display this article.