Development, Manufacturing and Test Status of the VINCI Expander Thrust Chamber Assembly

Abstract

The final go-ahead of the member states' governments for the European Space Agency's (ESA) challenging ARIANE 5 upgrade programs being recently given, the development of the two new cryogenic upper stages is now fully running in order to keep ARIANE's competitiveness in the commercial launcher market at highest possible level. Astrium GmbH, Space Infrastructure Division (former DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, Dasa) is not only the prime contractor for the development of the two new stages ESC-A and ESC-B, but also heavily involved in the development of the new cryogenic upper stage expander cycle engine VINCI. Astrium Space Infrastructure's Business Unit Propulsion, located in Ottobrunn, south of Munich, Germany, is presently developing the Thrust Chamber Assembly System (TCA) of the VINCI engine under direct contract of SNECMA Moteurs, Vernon, France, being the prime contractor for the VINCI engine assembly. Today's status of the development results is very promising w.r.t. the successfull delivery of a first TCA for engine integration in 2002. Analysis, modeling and manufacturing technology are going hand in hand with the production of the hardware, not only for the TCAcomponents subcontracted to other companies, e.g. STORK Product Engineering, Amsterdam, Netherlands, for the independent spark torch ignition system. This paper gives an overview on the development status, the problems encountered, the successes and the progress of the VINCI TCA w.r.t. analysis, design, manufacturing and recent test results. Special attention is given to the design evolution related to implementation of development results of the TCA itself, but also to the modifications necessitated and imposed by stage and engine level evolution, e.g. due to requirement and configuration changes. Advances in modeling, design and manufacturing methods are presented, as well as the progress of the TCA test facility adaptation. * Project Manager, VINCI Thrust Chamber Development † Project Engineer, VINCI Thrust Chamber, Subcontract Management ‡ Project Engineer, VINCI Thrust Chamber System Enginering and Testing § Project Engineer, VINCI Thrust Chamber Hardware AIAA 2002-4009