Development of an Automatic-Calibrating Small-Scale Thrust Stand for Rotating Detonation Rocket Engines

Abstract

The Rotating Detonation Engine has been seen as the next step for rocket propulsion applications with the advent of the Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine, an engine configuration developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory. In an effort to flight-test this engine and provide a dataset to train detonation-based simulation, the Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine has been tested in a collaborative effort including the University of Central Florida. For this testing, a thrust stand was developed to obtain the key thrust and impulse data necessary for advancing the engine to flight readiness. This thrust stand utilized the small-scale of the Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine to motivate an axial-loading measurement approach and the integration of an automatic-calibration subassembly, altogether which allows for incredibly accurate thrust measurements from an engine. Results using this thrust stand for two similar engine configurations are shown to validate the operation of the thrust stand.