[AR] Re: Composites and rocket engine chambers
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 10:53:32 -0400 (EDT)
On Sun, 1 Oct 2017, Lars Osborne wrote:
The challenge of making large regenerative engines for reduced costs seems
to focus on constructing the outer jacket...
Has anyone considered filament winding composites? Perhaps I am just way off
on the typical temperatures on the outside of the cooling jacket, but they
are supposed to be somewhat cool compared to the rest of the engine.
Well, somewhat, but the outer jacket is still quite a short conductive
path away from some pretty hot metal, and there might be problems during
startup and after shutdown in particular. These are things that could be
dealt with, but the complications would reduce the appeal.
More fundamentally, there'd always be a critical bond area where metal and
composite are in contact, and thermal-expansion mismatch is likely to be a
problem there. There has been some use of composite overwraps *outside*
the outer wall, which at least means no fluid leakage if there's some
cracking at the bond, but even that is out of fashion nowadays.
(All that said, it might be workable if done carefully. Such unorthodox
approaches often haven't been well explored. There hasn't been much money
in recent decades for investigating alternatives to conventional wisdom,
especially ideas which obviously have some problems.)
Henry
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