STAGED COMBUSTION CYCLE IN ROCKET ENGINE

EGME-418PREPARED BY: JAYKUMAR SHAH

CWID:893282533GUIDED BY: Dr. Haowei Wang

Outline:• Introduction• Objectives• Staged Combustion Cycle• Classification• Advantages & Drawbacks• Application• References

Introduction:

• A bi-propellant engine is an engine which is used for liquid or cryogenic rockets. The major principle to use this engine is to get higher specific impulse, which can be enabled using STAGED COMBUSTION CYCLE.

Objectives:

• To achieve higher efficiency & greater performance

• To work at higher pressure chamber• To minimize emission and wastage of

propellants• Flexibility of cycle design

Staged Combustion Cycle:

• It is a Bi-propellant engine cycle, where the word cycle indicates power cycle. Power cycle is used to pressurize the propellant as well as oxidizer to fed into rocket engines.

• Staged combustion was first proposed in 1949 by a Russian rocket engineer Alexey Isanev.

Staged Combustion Cycle (continued)

• In rocket engines, we need some kind of force or pressure to fed fuel and oxidizer to the thrust chamber.

• To get this force, we use a gas generator called ‘Preburner’, where we burn small quantity of oxidizer with large quantity of fuel making it Fuel-rich combustion.

Staged Combustion Cycle (continued)

• This preburner runs Turbines & Turbo-pumps connected to fuel-oxidizer tanks to pressurize them to fed into combustion chamber.

• In preburner, very small amount of fuel burns due to lack of the oxidizer. This fuel rich exhaust gases will have some unburnt fuel available.

• This exhaust gases goes to main combustion chamber to burn again.

Classification:• Fuel Rich Staged Combustion (FRSC)• Oxidizer Rich Staged Combustion (ORSC)

Advantages:• Burns almost all the fuel, so no dumping of

any propellant particles overboard• Ability to operate at high chamber pressure.• Generates high amount of Thrust, High Isp.• Reusable.

Drawbacks:• Production cost is higher due to complicated

design & Startup issues.

Application:• RD-180 Engine: made by Russia and used on

Atlas V rocket• Space Shuttle Main Engine• Raptor: It’s under development by SpaceX for the exploration and colonization of Mars.

References:• Rocket Propulsion Elements by George P. Sutton (8th edition)• Design of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines by David Huang• https://en.wiki2.org/wiki/Staged_combustion_cycle#History• http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/1

4oct_betterrocket/• http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-

512-rocket-propulsion-fall-2005/lecture-notes/lecture_25.pdf• http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/81051-staged-combusti

on-rocket-engines/

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