THERMAL AND STRUCTURAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A ROTATING DETONATION ROCKET ENGINE

A 1.6 inch/4.1 cm diameter water-cooled rotating detonation rocket combustor was designed and tested using gaseous oxygen and methane propellants at operating pressures from 5-15 atm. The test article was fabricated from a single part using selective laser melting of GRCop-84 material. Both low cycle fatigue (multiple start firings) and high cycle fatigue (long duration) firings were conducted and the water-cooled unit accrued over 300 sec of hotfire duration and 117 starts during the test campaign. Given the wave passing frequency near 13 kHz, cooling channel webs were exposed to over 3 million wave passages during the test campaign. Calorimetry results show outer- body heat fluxes 10-50% greater than throat level equivalents as computed from average operating conditions. Injector heat loads were substantially smaller but still averaged 30-50% of throat level equivalent values using average operating conditions.