Small-Scale Static Fire Tests of 3D Printing Hybrid Rocket Fuel Grains Produced from Different Materials

Abstract

The last decade has seen an almost exponential increase in the number of rocket launches for sounding missions or for delivering payloads into low Earth orbits. The emergence of new technologies like rapid prototyping, including 3D printing, is changing the approach to rocket motor design. This project conducted a series of small-scale static fire tests of fused deposition manufacturing hybrid rocket motors that were designed to explore the performance of a variety of commonly available fused deposition manufacturing materials. These materials included acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, acrylonitrile styrene acrylate, polylactic acid (PLA), polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate glycol, Nylon, and AL (PLA with aluminum particles). To test the performance of small-scale fuel grains, a modular apparatus with a range of sensors fitted to it was designed and manufactured. The small-scale testing performed static burns on two fuel grains of each material with initial dimensions of 100 mm long and 20 mm in diameter with a 6 mm straight circular combustion port. The focus of this study was mainly on the regression rates of each material of fuel grains. Acrylonitrile styrene acrylate and Nylon showed the highest regression rates, while the polyethylene terephthalate glycol regression rates were relatively poor. Also, the acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and acrylonitrile styrene acrylate demonstrating relatively high regression rates when compared to existing hybrid fuels like hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene.

Bone Tissue Engineering Scaffolds: Function of Multi‐Material Hierarchically Structured Scaffolds

“…AM can be defined as the process of building up objects or parts layer by layer. [127] There are several techniques (as described in Table 5), such as fused filament fabrication, stereolithography, and selective laser sintering, which have been previously used for scaffold manufacturing across different materials. [128] Additive manufacturing techniques offer resolutions from a few microns to millimeters depending on the technique used, further, they can process polymers, ceramics, and metals.…”

Review of Alternative Sustainable Fuels for Hybrid Rocket Propulsion

“…Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) has been used extensively in past hybrid research [113][114][115][116][117][118][119][120][121]. Polycarbonate and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) are two plastics that have been also proposed and, particularly with the latter, have been investigated for hybrid propulsion, as they are also suitable (together with some others) for production by modern flexible technologies such as 3D printing [142][143][144][145][146].…”

A new strategy for the reinforcement of paraffin-based fuels based on cellular structures: The armored grain — Mechanical characterization

“…The printed fuel featured a slightly reduced r f performance with respect to the HTPB baseline. McFarland and Antunes performed small-scale burning tests of 3D printed cylindrical central-perforated fuel grains [26]. Different printing materials were considered, with acrylonitrile styrene acrylate (ASA) and nylon fuels featuring the highest regression rates.…”

“…The gyroid is produced by additive production (AM) exploiting fuse deposition modeling (FDM). The AM has already been presented as a method for fuel grain manufacturing [24][25][26], and for the creation of scaffold structures embedding paraffin [27][28][29]. In previous open literature works, the 3D printed grain from AM was considered as the main fuel grain component.…”