Design and Testing of Advanced Vehicle System Additions for a Small Liquid Propellant Engine with Lessons Learned

摘要

The Liquid Rocket Launch Vehicle and Engine Teams of the Cal Poly Pomona Liquid Rocket Lab in the 2019-2020 academic year developed two additional support system elements which were needed for use with the vehicle/engine hot fire testing. The first support system element was alternate engine start valves, developed for use in the engine testing due to problems that were encountered with the original engine start valves (pyro actuated inline valves) during cold flows of the LV. The second vehicle support system was the strongback LV erector. This special LV support system was needed to accomplish the hot engine firing under the constraints of the FAR-Mars competition rules. This paper describes the status of the CPP FAR-Mars competition progress and these two new vehicle systems modifications developed during our program activity. Some of our testing objectives were postponed due to the COVID19 activity constraints.