By Carolynne Campbell
On March 6th 2014, the Autodiverse team conducted the first live test firing of its new ‘Knights Arrow Bybrid © ‘ rocket engine.
The test was conducted in the ‘J1′ test bay, at Westcott UK, under the direction and with the assistance of ‘Airborne Engineering’, whose facility it is.
This is an entirely novel bi-propellant engine with an extremely simple but very efficient propellant injection and cooling methodology. It is the next engine in the development sequence that was begun with the Knights Arrow kerosene wick engine, which gave excellent performance but waslimited in its possible applications, as it lacked significant duration and required rebuilding between
firings.
The new engine overcomes these limitations with the ability to supply the kerosene fuel from an external tank, thereby providing long duration and highly effective cooling. It can also be reignited, re-fuelled and re-used without breaking the motor apart. The engine is also fully throttle-able.
There are no obvious impediments to prevent scaling this concept up to a genuinely useful size. This initial test was conducted using Nitrous Oxide as the oxidiser, though we hope to progress to using Liquid Oxygen in the near future. The engine can be adapted to employ a variety of oxidisers, including Hydrogen Peroxide.
James Macfarlane (Airborne Engineering), Geoff Daly (MKD Llc USA), Carolyn Campbell-Knight
and Dr. Richard Osborne (who recorded all the visual data for us) considering instrumentation.
This initial success, has been achieved with the essential assistance of ‘Sinterch S.A.’, who supplied the materials essential to the engine’s design and function, and PBM Valve Solutions’, who provided customised valves especially for this engine.
David Knight contemplating the scene…
The motor was run at full power for five seconds. Some issues relating to the novel propellant delivery system emerged, which resulted in a less than perfect combustion pattern, but the data reveals that the motor was not unstable. Corrections and modifications are now being made to the propellant system, in anticipation of a further and longer test in the coming week.
The engine ran very cool, and post-firing inspection has revealed that the internals are intact and the engine can be used again without the need to dismantle or modify anything.
It is a very rare event for a novel rocket engine to perform so well on its maiden test. Now we have much work to do, but we have had a very encouraging baptism.
No comments:
Post a Comment