New project proposal for a solid rocket motor

Rocketry
1

Greetings everyone!
We just opened a new project proposal for the development of a solid rocket motor.
The proposal can be found below.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this and open a discussion in this section.
Thank you in advance!

Development of a High Impulse Solid Rocket Motor and its GSE.

Summary

  • A nine-month project with the goal to develop a high impulse (M-Class) Solid Rocket Motor based on Sorbitol propellant (KNSB) along with a suitable test stand in order to safely carry out static tests. Knowledge from an existing smaller impulse (I-Class) Motor will be used and thorough testing, (like destructive tests for the Motor’s combustion chamber) will be done to ensure maximum safety throughout.
  • The whole project is expected to be complete before late June 2024 (9 month time frame)
  • Everything will be designed in FreeCAD / KiCAD

Goals

Step 1 - Small scale solid rocket motor development (I class)

The first step will be to verify and test an already fabricated I class rocket motor. This will help us verify our knowledge and skills in a small, most forgiving scale and will serve as a stepping stone for the team to move to the full scale motor afterwards.
The goals of this step are presented below:

  1. Familiarization with OpenMotor, an open source internal ballistics simulator for solid rocket motors.
  2. Destructive hydrostatic testing. This will help us verify our design calculations and ensure that the engine is calculated as expected.
  3. Static test. The static test will verify the full engine design and will help us compare the measured results, with the ones given by OpenMotor.

Step 2 - Design and develop a test stand

The goal of this step is to design a test stand that will cover our needs, and will be expandable for future rocketry projects (eg, bigger solid engines, hybrid engines etc). Based on the knowledge acquired and problems seen during the RnD of the Cronos Rocket test stand, we will try to design a new one that will be able to cover the following needs.

  1. Should be easily transferred throughout different locations
  2. Should be able to take a wide range of rocket motors
  3. Should be able to contain a possible CATO of the engine
  4. Should have a blast proof integrated electronics compartment
  5. Should have the least possible amount of setup time

Step 3 - Full scale solid rocket motor development (M class)

This is the final step of the project. The

  1. Designed with Open Motor
  2. Devolpment of a design calculations tool (bolts, aluminum burst etc)
  3. Destructive hydrostatic test with smaller scale / simpler specimencs to verify design calculations
  4. Itterate upon those until a solid tool is developed
  5. Proceed with the rest of the engine design
  6. Destructive hydrostatic testing → Verify mechanical calculations
  7. Static test–> Verify engine design

Roles

Design, manufacturing and testing: Thanos Patsas, Petros Tsiompanis

Timeline

From October 2023 to June 2024

DATE Test stand Engine
1-31 October Test stand RnD (electronics, mechanical) Small scale engine design verification (OpenMotor)
1-15 November Test stand design finished Small scale engine hydrostatic tests
15-30 November Test stand manufacturing Small scale engine buffer time for possible mishaps
1-15 December Test stand manufacturing Small scale engine buffer time for possible mishaps
15-31 December Static test preperation/Engine integration on the test stand/Available time for possible tinkering
1-15 January N/A Small scale engine static test
15-31 January N/A Small scale engine static test data analysis
1-31 February N/A Full scale engine RnD
1-31 March N/A Full scale engine manufacturing
1-31 April N/A Full scale engine hydro and itterations if needed
1-31 May N/A Final engine assembly / Buffer time
1-31 June N/A Full scale engine static test and data analysis

Resources

  1. Approximately 2000€ for procurement of tools / materials / electronics components.
  2. Hackerspace.gr tools as it will serve as the main development lab.
  3. No employee payed time will be allocated for this project.

Metrics

  1. Test stand build by mid December 2023
  2. Small Motor testing by late January 2024
  3. Motor Manufacturing by late April 2024
  4. Hydrostatic Testing by late April 2024
  5. Static Testing by late June 2024
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