Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden and TU Dresden’s aerospace experts developed an additively manufactured rocket engine with an aerospike nozzle for microlaunchers. The scaled metal prototype is expected to consume 30% less fuel than conventional engines. Microlaunchers are an alternative to conventional launch vehicles. Able to carry payloads of up to 350 kilograms, these midsized transport systems launch small satellites into space.

The market for small satellites is sure to boom in the years ahead. The United Kingdom aims to build a spaceport in the north of Scotland, the first on European soil. The Federation of German Industries (BDI) has also endorsed the idea of a national spaceport. It is to serve as the pad for small-to-midsized launchers that haul research instruments and small satellites into space.

Aerospike engines are an efficient means of powering the microlaunchers. They offer far less mass and far lower fuel consumption. The researchers developed, manufactured and tested an aerospike engine over the past two years. What sets this aerospike engine apart from others is that its fuel injector, combustion chamber and nozzle are printed layer by layer in a laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing process. The nozzle consists of a spike-like center-body designed to accelerate combustion gases.

“The technology behind aerospike engines dates back to the 1960s. But our ability to produce engines as efficient as this is owed to the freedom brought by additive manufacturing and its embedding in conventional process chains,” says Michael Müller, scientific assistant at the Additive Manufacturing Center Dresden (AMCD), which is jointly operated by Fraunhofer IWS and TU Dresden.

Aerospike rocket engines promise fuel savings of around 30% over conventional rockets. They are also more compact than conventional systems, which reduces the overall system’s mass.

“Every gram saved is worth its weight in gold in space flight because less fuel must be taken into orbit. The heavier the overall system, the lighter its payload has to be,” says Mirco Riede, group manager 3D manufacturing at Fraunhofer IWS and colleague of Michael Müller.

In addition, the aerospike nozzle better adapts to the changing pressure on the trip from Earth to orbit. This makes it more efficient, so it burns less fuel than conventional engines.

An additively manufactured nozzle with conformal cooling
“We opted for an additive way of manufacturing the metal rocket because the engine requires good cooling and needs internal cooling channels. This complex regenerative cooling system with labyrinthine internal ducts cannot be milled or cast in conventional ways,” says Riede.

The selective laser melting process gradually builds a component with one-millimeter-wide cooling channels that follow the combustion chamber’s contours. Residual powder in the channels is vacuumed out. The metal must remain solid at high temperatures and conduct heat well to ensure optimum cooling.

“Temperatures of several thousand degrees Celsius prevail in the combustion chamber, so this does require active cooling,” says Müller.

Scientists at Fraunhofer IWS and TU Dresden are looking to the injection system in a bid to further boost engine efficiency. Called CFDμSAT, this project has been underway since January 2020 with the Ariane Group and Siemens AG taking part as associated partners.

Injectors pose major design and manufacturing challenges. “Fuels first serve to cool the engine. They heat up and are then induced into the combustion chamber. Liquid oxygen and ethanol are added separately to be blended with the injector. The resulting gas mixture is ignited. It expands in the combustion chamber and then flows through a gap in the combustion chamber to be decompressed and accelerated by the nozzle,” notes Müller, explaining how this engine produces thrust.

Engine hot-fire test
The Dresden-based researchers have already tested the prototype of the aerospike engine in a test cell at TU Dresden’s Institute of Aerospace Engineering, achieving a burn time of 30 seconds. “This process is special because there have been scant few precedents for aerospike nozzles tests. We have proven that a working liquid propellant jet engine can be produced by way of additive manufacturing,” says Müller.

This project is one example of the close collaboration between the TU Dresden and non-university research institutes within a science cluster called the DRESDEN-concept. TU Dresden is responsible for the engine’s design and layout; Fraunhofer IWS for the manufacturing and material validation. Their first step was to adapt the design to the additive manufacturing process. The researchers then selected and characterized the material. Next, they produced the engine’s two components with the L-PBF method and reworked their functional surfaces. The components were joined by laser welding and a computed tomography scanner inspected for pores and other defects. This non-destructive evaluation can also determine if sintered powder is obstructing the cooling channels. This project demonstrates how AM processes can be integrated into today’s process chains in a productive way across all industries to advance the state of the art in manufacturing.

Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS
www.iws.fraunhofer.de/en