High Performance Russian D-57 LO2/LH2 Rocket Engine

摘要

The D-57 engine was designed to provide trans-lunar insertion of manned payloads for the Russian N-1 rocket program. This O_2/H_2 represented a first for the Russian industry and an extensive effort, was expended with contributions from many of the combustion and thermal process institutes. Development began in 1959 with sub scale combustion devices and basic technology validation efforts. Pressure fed combustion rigs were scaled from 2 MT to 40 MT using both gaseous hydrogen to simulate preburner operation and actual preburner direct connect tests. Turbomachinery development began with bearing testing using propellants as coolants, and control valves using electric motor drives were also evaluated. In all 1282 component tests were conducted accumulating over 263,000 second of test time as well as 470 engine system tests with 105 engines. This extensive development activity covered nearly fifteen years with the later six years used to evalaute differenct nozzle configurations which demonstrated higher performance and increased mission flexibility.