Rocket Thrust Measurement Experiment for Aerospace Structures and Instrumentation Lab
Aerodynamics, Aerospace, Simulation, MatLab, CATIA, STK, Simulink, Airplanes, Rockets, Wind Tunnel, Experiment, NASA, SpaceX, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Airbus, Jet Propulsion, Airfoil, Flow Visualization, Angle of Attack, Vortices, Cessna, Single Engine, Multi Engine, Fluids, Dynamics, Thermodynamics, Flight Dynamics and Control, Laminar Flow, Steady, Turbulent, Aeronautics, Fuselage, Wing,
In a rocket engine, fuel and oxidizer are combusted to generate thrust. The two types of engines used in rockets are solid rocket engines and liquid rocket engines. For a solid rocket engine, all the propellant such as crystalline oxidizer, nitroglycerine and more are contained within the combustion chamber. For a liquid engine, all the propellant is contained in separate tanks. When the engine is used all the propellant and mixtures are accelerated and ejected through a de Laval Convergent-Divergent nozzle causing a rearward momentum which produces thrust. For this experiment the data acquisition (DAQ) system is used, this system also contains the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) which converts analog transducer output voltage to a digital number. These numbers are stored in the computer to be used for analysis later in the experiment. Once the data has been analyzed, maximum thrust, constant thrust, average thrust, total impulse, burn time, and delay time can be determined. These results were then compared to the theoretical results, and then the percent errors were calculated.