Rocket Application Design Requirements

• Thrust Level and Operating Pressure

– Boosters
• Boosters are the largest and highest pressure engines.

• Their high thrust is required to accelerate the gross liftoff weight of the entire
vehicle, including sustainer and/or upper stages as well as payload, into orbit.

• The high pressure is required to accelerate the nozzle exhaust gases against the
atmospheric pressure to high Mach numbers, to maximize specific impulse
performance.

• Because the tank volumes are very large, these boosters are pump-fed from
lightweight, low pressure propellant tanks just sufficiently pressurized to suppress
pump cavitation.
 Rocket Application Design Requirements
• Thrust Level and Operating Pressure
– Sustainers or Second-Stage Devices
• Sustainers or second-stage vehicle propulsion devices effectively operate outside of the
Earth’s atmosphere.

• They can achieve high performance by merely expanding to very high nozzle exit to
throat area ratios.

• They do not need to operate at chamber pressures as high as for boosters and can be
pump fed or operated from pressurized propellant tanks.

– Upper-Stage Devices
• Upper stages are smaller versions of sustainers. Their propellant mass fractions relative
to total stage weight are less than for lower stages.

• To save both the weight and costs of a pumping system, usually fed from pressurized
tanks.
 Rocket Application Design Requirements
• Thrust Level and Operating Pressure
– Reaction Control and Satellite Propulsion Systems
• Reaction control systems or satellite propulsion engines are the smallest rocket
thrusters available.

• These thrusters provide in-flight vehicle guidance or provide in-orbit satellite

station keeping functions.

• They are virtually always pressure fed and operate at low chamber pressures.
 Rocket Application Design Requirements
• Propellant Type
– Cryogenics
• Cryogenics remain in liquid form only if kept sub-cooled below ambient
temperature.

• The most common cryogenic propellant combination is liquid oxygen (LO2) and
liquid hydrogen (LH2).

• This pair has the advantage of high specific impulse performance and is
environmentally nonpolluting.

• In most cases the hydrogen, which is an excellent coolant, is used to regeneratively

cool the combustion chamber and nozzle.

• Thus, it is usually in a gaseous state by the time it is injected into the combustion
system.
 Rocket Application Design Requirements
• Propellant Type
– Semi-Cryogenic
• The most commonly used hydrocarbon is kerosene due to its ready availability, low
propellant cost, ease of storability and moderate bulk density, which reduces fuel
tank structural weight as compared to liquid hydrogen.

• Liquid oxygen is highly volatile as compared to kerosene. Hence, the combustion

chamber length must be designed for the vaporization limited fuel rather than for
the oxidizer.

• This propellant combination offers challenges in the balancing of the design

requirements for thermal cooling, high-performance efficiency, and combustion
stability, and could benefit greatly from a systematic combustion analysis approach.

• sometimes referred to as space storables.

 Rocket Application Design Requirements
• Propellant Type
– Earth Storable
• The oxidizer used with Earth storables is usually a nitric acid (HNO3) mixture or
other oxide of nitrogen such as nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4).

• The most common Earth-storable fuels are amines, a member of the hydrazine
(N2H4) family or its derivatives.

• These propellants are liquids at ambient temperature and pressure and are usually
hypergolic on contact. Thus, a separate ignition system is not required.
 Rocket Application Design Requirements
• Engine Cycle or Feed System
– Pressurized Propellant Tanks
• The pressurized propellant tank provides the simplest feed system. The typical tank
pressurant is gaseous helium or nitrogen.

• Helium is usually used in flight because of its lighter weight, whereas nitrogen is
usually substituted during use in ground test facilities because of its ready availability
and low cost.

• To minimize tank structural weight, pressure-fed flight tank pressures are kept low and
both combustion device operating pressures and feed system pressure drops are also
minimized.

• To further minimize pressurant storage bottle and gas weight, the propellant tank
pressure may only be regulated over the initial portion of its mission and permitted to
operate in a blowdown mode to its propellant exhaustion.
 Rocket Application Design Requirements
• Engine Cycle or Feed System
– Gas Generator Cycle
• The gas generator cycle is the simplest form of the pump-fed engine cycles.

• A small portion of the main engine propellant is bypassed and burned in a separate
combustion device operating at low combustion gas temperature in order to power
a turbine that, in turn, drives the propellant pumps.

• Because the turbine exhaust gases are dumped overboard at low temperature and
low pressure, the lower gas generator exhaust gas performance reduces the overall
engine system performance.
 Rocket Application Design Requirements
• Engine Cycle or Feed System
– Staged Combustion Cycle
• The staged combustion cycle flows all of one propellant and a small fraction of the
other to keep combustion gas temperature low enough to permit turbine drive.

• Then it injects the remaining propellant downstream of the turbine to recover

maximum engine performance at high gas temperature.

• The first combustion device, referred to as a preburner, has design criteria similar to
those of a gas generator, except that it is usually larger in size.

• The larger size allows the preburner to accommodate a higher mass flowrate and
operate at considerably higher pressure.
 Rocket Application Design Requirements
• Engine Cycle or Feed System
– Expander Cycle
• An expander cycle is somewhat similar to a staged combustion cycle in that no
turbine drive gases are exhausted overboard.

• It has the further simplification that it does not require either a preburner or a gas
generator.

• The turbine drive gases are heated while regeneratively cooling the main
combustion chamber and nozzle.

• In practice, the expander cycle has been developed only for the oxygen/hydrogen
propellant combination.

• Only hydrogen can provide adequate cooling to the regenerative main combustion
chamber and still be heated sufficiently to drive the turbine.