A past University of Central Florida senior design project, the UCF Orange Project, set out to build a Simulated Solid Rocket Motor (SSRM) so the university’s Composite Materials and Structures Laboratory could test ablative composite materials quickly, repeatedly and more safely than by firing real solid rocket motors. Vaughn Associates helped the student team secure support from Porter Instruments, one of several companies backing the project.
What problem was the team solving?
UCF’s Composite Materials and Structures Laboratory (CMSL), part of the Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering Department, needed a faster way to characterize the ablative properties of composite materials being considered for solid rocket motor nozzles.
Those materials must survive a high-temperature exhaust environment in which highly abrasive aluminum particles strike the composite surface, as they do when a solid rocket motor fires. The conventional approach, manufacturing a composite nozzle and test-firing a motor, had serious drawbacks according to the project background:
- Cost: building nozzles and firing motors is cost prohibitive.
- Time: each test is slow to prepare.
- Consistency: results vary from firing to firing.
- Safety: solid propellants are hazardous to handle and fire.
- One-shot hardware: a test firing destroys the nozzle, so it can only be tested once.
What is a Simulated Solid Rocket Motor?
The team’s answer was a motor that reproduces the damaging conditions of a solid rocket exhaust without solid propellant. As described in the project objective, the SSRM would actually be a bi-propellant gaseous/liquid motor with a particulate injection system to supply the abrasive character of solid propellant exhaust.
That configuration offered two important advantages for the lab:
- Control. Heat transfer and the amount of abrasive material could be closely controlled, so material comparisons would be more meaningful.
- Throughput. Composites could be tested as flat plates instead of finished nozzles, allowing multiple tests in a relatively short period.
What did the project scope include?
The objective was to design, develop and build a working prototype. According to the project page, the scope covered:
- The gaseous/liquid rocket motor itself.
- A mounting system to place the composite sample directly in the motor’s exhaust plume.
- Control and monitoring systems for the motor.
- Fuel and oxidizer feed systems.
- Ground support equipment to secure the motor for firing.
The team members listed on the project were Bronson Collins, Jonathan Martinez, Donald Durm III, Tyler Maddox, Eric McClellan and Rebekah Reams.
Why does ablative composite testing matter?
Ablative materials protect rocket nozzles and other hot structures by gradually charring and eroding in a controlled way, absorbing and carrying away heat as they do. How quickly a candidate material erodes under combined heat and particle impact directly affects nozzle performance and design margins. A repeatable bench-scale test that screens materials before full-scale motor firings saves time and money, and it lets researchers study more candidate materials than one-shot nozzle tests allow.
How did Vaughn Associates help?
The project had a projected cost of $9,000, which the team planned to offset with support from companies including Lockheed Martin, Porter Instruments, Dynetics and others.
The team contacted Vaughn Associates, and sales manager William B. Weeks Jr. assisted in acquiring support from Porter Instruments by working with Mike Marsceill, Porter’s product manager. With gaseous and liquid feed systems in the design, a flow measurement and control manufacturer was a natural partner, and connecting student engineers with a manufacturer’s product team is the kind of link a rep firm is well positioned to make.
Update: Porter Instrument has been part of Parker Hannifin since 2005. Its industrial flow and pressure products, including rotameters, mass flow controllers and regulators, are now sold through Parker’s Precision Fluidics Division. Today Vaughn Associates represents Parker Precision Fluidics in Georgia, Florida and the Florida Panhandle.
Supporting university research across the Southeast
Vaughn Associates continues to work with university labs and research programs throughout our territory, helping faculty and students choose instrumentation, obtain formal quotes for grant budgets, and connect with manufacturers’ application engineers. Learn more about how we support universities and research labs, explore precision fluidics and mass flow control, or contact us about your project.
