Water Test Stand Injector Plate

Texas A&M University (TAMU) Rocketed Engine Design (RED) is a student run organization focusing building our school's first and only liquid fueled rocket engine. I served as the injector plate and thrust chamber lead during the 2023-2024 academic year.

This injector plate is for the team's first engine, a propane and liquid oxygen powered engine, named Genesis. Due to inexperience with volatile chemicals in extreme temperature and pressure ranges, and upon considerations with the Aerospace department at TAMU, this engine was converted to a water test stand.

Background

The previous injector plate team at TAMU RED began initial designs on a shower head geometry injector using NASA SP-8089 as the primary reference material. This injector is a 3 component part that consists of a oxidizer main manifold, ring wall (fuel manifold), and the interface plate between the propellent lines and injector inlets.

Continuing the their progress, the team used NASA's Chemical Equilibrium with Applications (CEA) to gain a better understand of the combustion downstream of the injector. This information is used to design the orifices, element, and manifold to meet combustion temperature, flow rate, and thrust requirements. After the combustion was characterized, the shower head injector geometry was modeled in Solidworks and analyzed using the Ansys suite of tools (mechanical and fluent).