Monday morning Virgin Galactic and their partners at Scaled Composites reached a new milestone in their commercial sub-orbital spaceflight program, firing SpaceShipTwo’s main engine for the first time and accelerating Keep reading
Tag: rocket engine
Homemade Hybrid Rocket Engine
In this video, Ben Krasnow details and demos a small hybrid rocket engine he built in his workshop. Hybrid rockets utilize propellants that are two different states of matter, in Keep reading
Rocket Engine Test
[original media no longer available] In this static test of XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx rocket engine, Mach diamonds (shown at the top of the frame) are visible in the rocket exhaust. Keep reading
Atomizing Jets
The breakup of impinging jets into droplets (also called atomization) and the subsequent dynamics of those droplets are important in applications like jet and rocket engines where the mixing of Keep reading
Rocket Engine Testing
Rocket engine tests usually feature a distinct and steady pattern of Mach diamonds in their exhaust. This series of reflected shock waves and expansion fans forms as a result of Keep reading
Atomization
Atomization–breaking a flowing liquid into a fine spray–is important for fuel injection in a variety of engines, including automobiles, jet engines, ramjets, scramjets, and rockets. The more effectively a liquid Keep reading
Rocket Diamonds
The exhaust of a Pratt and Whitney J58 shines with Mach diamonds, a series of shock waves and expansion fans that form to equalize the exhaust and ambient pressures. This Keep reading
Godspeed, Discovery!
The space shuttle, despite three decades of service, remains a triumph of engineering. Although it is nominally a space vehicle, fluid dynamics are vital throughout its operation. From the combustion Keep reading
Starting a Rocket
This computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation shows the start-up of a two-dimensional, ideal rocket nozzle. Starting a rocket engine or supersonic wind tunnel is more complicated than its subsonic counterpart Keep reading
Mach Diamonds
Joe asks: Why does this rocket have that repeating pattern in its exhaust? I’m amazed that it’s so stable for so far as distance from the nozzle. Excellent question! The Keep reading