Designing and testing of HDPE–N2O hybrid rocket engine

Hybrid Rocket Engines (HREs) combine the advantages of solid and liquid propellants, offering thrust control, simplicity, safety, and cost efficiency. Part of the research on this rocket architecture focuses on optimising combustion chamber design to enhance performance, a process traditionally reliant on time-consuming experimental adjustments to chamber lengths. In this study, two configurations of HREs were designed and tested. The tests aimed to study the impact of post-chamber lengths on rocket engine performance by experimental firings on a laid-back test engine. This study focused on designing, manufacturing, and testing a laid-back hybrid engine with two chamber configurations. The engine features a small combustion chamber, an L-shaped mount, a spark ignition, and nitrogen purging. Data acquisition includes thermocouples, pressure transducers, and a load cell for thrust measurement. Our experimental findings provide insights into thrust, temperature gradients, pressure, and plume characteristics. A non-linear regression model derived from the experimental data established an empirical relationship between performance and chamber lengths, offering a foundation for further combustion flow studies. The post-chamber length positively impacted the engine thrust performance by 2.7%. Conversely, the pre-chamber length negatively impacted the performance by 1.3%. Further data collection could assist in refining the empirical relation and identifying key threshold values.