ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING IN ROCKET COMPONENTS: ANALYSIS OF AN INJECTOR

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a fast approaching, relatively new solution to many complex engineering problems. It is seen as a potential enhancement to subtractive manufacturing such as machining, jetting and cutting. Like all other industries, the aerospace industry (with a specific target on the rocket manufacturing industry) has seen an advent of its use, evident by the 2012 experiments by NASA on injectors as one of the initial rocket components targeted for AM. The Selective Laser Melting (SLM) method of AM is seen to be the most popular for complex geometries among a variety of others. Rocket injectors are the most suitable rocket components to be manufactured through SLM as claimed throughout this paper. Lastly, water testing and CFD simulation data points are used to model a personally-designed coaxial swirl injector which will be 3D printed replicating AM at a basic level. Deviations in spray patterns were evident between the two models with a positive relation of the spray angle in response to pressure for both. However, the main difference lay in the mass flow rates with the paper inquiring the factors behind it.