A SEMINAR ON

ROCKET ENGINE

SUBMITTED TO:- SUBMITTED BY:-

Prof. B.S.SRIVASTAVA alankrit shukla

Prof. S.P.ASTHANA (0807040001)
Prof. D.S.PANDEY
Prof AMIT KUMAR GUPTA Mech,3rdyr (ME-32)

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & RURAL

TECHNOLOGY-MEERUT
 acknowledgement

we are very much delighted in presenting this “seminar report”

which is prepared by us under the guidance of HOD &
PROF’s(Mech.Dept.)
This report has enabled us extent to-
1. To be exposed to the current technological developments
relevant to the subject area
2. To appreciate tThanks to our HOD & PROF’s(Mech.Dept.) for
giving this opportunity to enhance my knowledge

ROCKET ENGINE
A rocket engine has its own oxidesiser and does depen on
surrounding air .hence it can operate at any place even in
vaccume . the fuel and oxideser carried into the body of the
unit which is to be propelled

Rocketry encompasses a wide range of topics, each of which takes

many years of study to master. This chapter provides an initial
foundation toward the study of rocket theory by addressing the
physical laws governing motion/propulsion, rocket performance
parameters, rocket propulsion techniques, reaction masses
(propellants), chemical rocketsand advanced propulsion techniques

Introduction to How Rocket Engines Work

One of the most amazing endeavors man has ever undertaken
is the exploration of space. A big p art of the amazement is the
complexity. Space exploration is complicated because there
are so many problems to solve and obstacles to overcome. You
have things like:
 The vacuum of space
 Heat management problems
 The difficulty of re-entry
 Orbital mechanics
 Micrometeorites and space debris
 Cosmic and solar radiation
 The logistics of having restroom facilities in a weightless
environment
But the biggest problem of all is harnessing enough energy
simply to get a spaceship off the ground. That is where rocket
engines come in.

Rocket engines are, on the one hand, so simple that you can
build and fly your own model rockets very inexpensively (see
the links on the last page of the article for details). On the other
hand, rocket engines (and their fuel systems) are so
complicated that only three countries have actually ever put
people in orbit. In this article, we will look at rocket engines to
understand how they work, as well as to Wh en most people
think about motors or engines, they think about rotation. For
example, a reciprocating gasoline engine in a car produces
rotational energy to drive the wheels. An electric
motorproduces rotational energy to drive a fan or spin a disk.
A steam engine is used to do the same thing, as is a steam
turbine and most gas turbines.
Rocket engines are fundamentally different. Rocket engines
arereaction engines. The basic principle driving a rocket
engine is the famous Newtonian principle that "to every action
there is an equal and opposite reaction." A rocket engine is
throwing mass in one direction and benefiting from the reaction
that occurs in the other direction as a result.
This concept of "throwing mass and benefiting from the
reaction" can be hard to grasp at first, because that does not
seem to be what is happening. Rocket engines seem to be
about flames and noise and pressure, not "throwing things."
Let's look at a few examples to get a better picture of reality:
 If you have ever shot a shotgun, especially a big 12-
gauge shotgun, then you know that it has a lot of "kick."
That is, when you shoot the gun it "kicks" your shoulder
back with a great deal of force. That kick is a reaction. A
shotgun is shooting about an ounce of metal in one
direction at about 700 miles per hour, and your shoulder
gets hit with the reaction. If you were wearing roller
skates or standing on askateboard when you shot the
gun, then the gun would be acting like a rocket engine
and you would react by rolling in the opposite direction.
 If you have ever seen a big fire hose spraying water,
you may have noticed that it takes a lot of strength to
hold the hose (sometimes you will see two or
three firefighters holding the hose). The hose is acting
like a rocket engine. The hose is throwing water in one
direction, and the firefighters are using their strength and
weight to counteract the reaction. If they were to let go of
 the hose, it would thrash around with tremendous force.
If the firefighters were all standing on skateboards, the
hose would propel them backward at great speed!
 When you blow up a balloon and let it go so that it flies
all over the room before running out of air, you have
created a rocket engine. In this case, what is being
thrown is the air molecules inside the balloon. Many
people believe that air molecules don't weigh anything,
but they do (see the page on helium to get a better
picture of the weight of air). When you throw them out
the nozzle of a balloon, the rest of the balloon reacts in
the opposite direction.

Types of Rocket Engines

Rocket engines have advanced dramatically since the 1960's,

when they were used to take people to the moon. Liquid and
solid fuel engines are used currently in the U.S. space program.
The future holds newer technologies, including experimentation
with nuclear and other engine types. These advanced engines
will burn cleaner and use fuel more efficiently, but still provide
the power needed to go into space.

1.Solid Fuel Rocket Engine

This is the main engine used during launch. This type of engine
can only be ignited once, but has tremendous thrust power and
great reliability. This engine is also made up of fewer movable
parts. The fuel in the engine is mixed with an oxidizer and
becomes a solid. This solid is "cemented," or coats, the inside
of the rocket casing. When ignited, the fuel burns all at once
inside the rocket, creating an explosion of gases out of the
bottom of the rocket. This explosion is focused through the
nozzle at the bottom of the rocket.

2.Liquid Bipropellant Rocket Engine

Liquid fuel engines are very versatile. They can be used for the
main launch engine or on a smaller scale to control craft
movement. They are more complex in their design, but can be
restarted if needed. They also pack a lot of thrust. This engine
uses a liquid oxidizer and a liquid fuel, which are in two
separate tanks. When the tanks are opened, the two liquids mix
in a "combustion chamber," and are ignited by an impulse of
electricity. The gas mixture burns as a whole on the inside,
creating hot gases that pass through the nozzle below the
combustion chamber. This propels the rocket upward. The
mixture can be precisely controlled.

3.Liquid Monopropellant Rocket Engine

Liquid monopropellant is chemical liquid used for the rocket

fuel. Hydrogen peroxide is one example of a chemical that can
be used in this type of engine. The chemical "decomposes"
within the tank as it goes through a "platinum catalyst mesh."
Then, the hydrogen peroxide becomes oxygen and steam,
which comes out the nozzle and provides the lifting power. A
liquid monopropellant engine is easy to control and consists of
fewer moving parts.
4.Nuclear Rocket Engines

A nuclear rocket engine passes liquid hydrogen through the

reactor's center, creating a propellant gas that is expelled
through the nozzle below for thrust. The hydrogen in its liquid
state can be stored in a single tank. This engine is currently
being researched for use in the future.

ROCKET PHYSICS

Sir Isaac Newton set forth the basic laws of motion; the means by
which we analyze the rocket principle. Newton’s three laws of motion
apply to all rocket-propelled vehicles. They apply to gas jets used for
attitude control, small rockets used for stage separations or for
trajectory corrections and to large rockets used to launch a vehicle
from the surface of the Earth. They apply to nuclear, electric and other
advanced types of rockets as well as to chemical rockets. Newton’s
laws of motion are stated briefly as follows:

Newton’s 1st Law

(Inertia)

Every body continues in a state of uniform motion in a straight line,

unless it is compelled to change that state by a force imposed upon
it.
Newton’s 2nd Law
(Momentum)

When a force is applied to a body, the time rate of change of

momentum is proportional to, and in the direction of, the applied
force.

Newton’s 3rd Law

(Action—Reaction)
For every action there is a reaction that is equal in magnitude but
opposite in direction to the action.

Thrust

The "strength" of a rocket engine is called its thrust.

Thrust is measured in "pounds of thrust" in the U.S. and in
Newtons under the metric system (4.45 Newtons of thrust
equals 1 pound of thrust). A pound of thrust is the amount
of thrust it would take to keep a 1-pound object stationary
against the force of gravity on Earth. So on Earth, the
acceleration of gravity is 32 feet per second per second (21
mph per second). If you were floating in space with a bag
of baseballs and you threw one baseball per second away
from you at 21 mph, your baseballs would be generating
the equivalent of 1 pound of thrust. If you were to throw
the baseballs instead at 42 mph, then you would be
generating 2 pounds of thrust. If you throw them at 2,100
mph (perhaps by shooting them out of some sort of
baseball gun), then you are generating 100 pounds of
thrust, and so on.
One of the funny problems rockets have is that the objects
that the engine wants to throw actually weigh something,
and the rocket has to carry that weight around. So let's say
that you want to generate 100 pounds of thrust for an hour
by throwing one baseball every second at a speed of 2,100
mph. That means that you have to start with 3,600 1-pound
baseballs (there are 3,600 seconds in an hour), or 3,600
pounds of baseballs. Since you only weigh 100 pounds in
your spacesuit, you can see that the weight of your "fuel"
dwarfs the weight of the payload (you). In fact, the fuel
weights 36 times more than the payload. And that is very
common. That is why you have to have a huge rocket to
get a tiny person into space right now -- you have to carry
a lot of fuel.
You can see the weight equation very clearly on the Space
Shuttle. If you have ever seen the
Space Shuttle launch, you know that there are three parts:
 The Orbiter
 The big external tank
 The two solid rocket boosters (SRBs)
The Orbiter weighs 165,000 pounds empty. The external
tank weighs 78,100 pounds empty. The two solid rocket
boosters weigh 185,000 pounds empty each. But then you
have to load in the fuel. Each SRB holds 1.1 million pounds
of fuel. The external tank holds 143,000 gallons of liquid
oxygen (1,359,000 pounds) and 383,000 gallons of liquid
hydrogen (226,000 pounds). The whole vehicle -- shuttle,
external tank, solid rocket booster casings and all the fuel
-- has a total weight of 4.4 million pounds at launch. 4.4
million pounds to get 165,000 pounds in orbit is a pretty
big difference! To be fair, the orbiter can also carry a
65,000-pound payload (up to 15 x 60 feet in size), but it is
still a big difference. The fuel weighs almost 20 times more
than the Orbiter [source: The Space Shuttle Operator's
Manual].
PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION

Rocket engines give part of their thrust due to unopposed

pressure on the combustion chamber
Rocket engines produce thrust by the expulsion of a high-
speed fluid exhaust. This fluid is nearly always a gas which is
created by high pressure (10-200 bar) combustion of solid or
liquid propellants, consisting of fuel and oxidiser components,
within a combustion chamber.
The fluid exhaust is then passed through a propelling
nozzle which typically uses the heat energy of the gas to
accelerate the exhaust to very high speed, and the reaction to
this pushes the engine in the opposite direction.
In rocket engines, high temperatures and pressures are highly
desirable for good performance as this permits a longer nozzle
to be fitted to the engine, which gives higher exhaust speeds,
as well as giving better thermodynamic efficiency.

Introducing propellant into a combustion chamber

Rocket propellant is mass that is stored, usually in some form
of propellant tank, prior to being ejected from a rocket engine in
the form of a fluid jet to produce thrust.
Chemical rocket propellants are most commonly used, which
undergo exothermic chemical reactions which produce hot gas
which is used by a rocket for propulsive purposes. Alternatively,
a chemically inert reaction mass can be heated using a high-
energy power source via a heat exchanger, and then no
combustion chamber is used.
Solid rocket  propellants are prepared as a mixture of fuel and
oxidizing components called 'grain' and the propellant storage
casing effectively becomes the combustion chamber.
Liquid-fueled rockets  typically pump separate fuel and oxidiser
components into the combustion chamber, where they mix and
burn.
Hybrid rocket  engines use a combination of solid and liquid or
gaseous propellants. Both liquid and hybrid rockets
use injectors to introduce the propellant into the chamber.
These are often an array of simple
jets- holes through which the propellant escapes under
pressure; but sometimes may be more complex spray nozzles.
When two or more propellants are injected the jets usually
deliberately collide the propellants as this breaks up the flow
into smaller droplets that burn more easily.

Combustion chamber

For chemical rockets the combustion chamber is typically just a

cylinder, and flame holders are rarely used. The dimensions of
the cylinder are such that the propellant is able to combust
thoroughly; different propellants require different combustion
chamber sizes for this to occur. This leads to a number
called L * :
 where:

 Vc is the volume of the chamber

 At is the area of the throat
L* is typically in the range of 25–60 inches (0.63–1.5 m).

Rocket nozzles

Typical temperatures (T) and pressures (p) and speeds (v)

in a De Laval Nozzle
The large bell or cone shaped expansion nozzle gives a
rocket engine its characteristic shape.
In rockets the hot gas produced in the combustion chamber
is permitted to escape from the combustion chamber
through an opening (the "throat"), within a high expansion-
ratio 'de Laval nozzle'.
Provided sufficient pressure is provided to the nozzle (about
2.5-3x above ambient pressure) the nozzle chokes and a
supersonic jet is formed, dramatically accelerating the gas,
converting most of the thermal energy into kinetic energy.
The exhaust speeds vary, depending on the expansion ratio
the nozzle is designed to give, but exhaust speeds as high
as ten times the speed of sound of sea level air are not
uncommon.

Rocket thrust is caused by pressures acting in the

combustion chamber and nozzle. From Newtons third law,
equal and opposite pressures act on the exhaust, and this
accelerates it to high speeds.
About half of the rocket engine's thrust comes from the
unbalanced pressures inside the combustion chamber and
the rest comes from the pressures acting against the inside
of the nozzle. As the gas expands the pressure against the
nozzle's walls forces the rocket engine in one direction while
accelerating the gas in the other.

Propellant efficiency

For a rocket engine to be propellant efficient, it is important

that the maximum pressures possible be created on the
walls of the chamber and nozzle by a specific amount of
propellant; as this is the source of the thrust. This can be
achieved by all of:

 heating the propellant to as high a temperature as

possible (using a high energy fuel, containing hydrogen
and carbon and sometimes metals such as aluminium, or
even using nuclear energy)
 using a low specific density gas (as hydrogen rich as
possible)
 using propellants which are, or decompose to, simple
molecules with few degrees of freedom to maximise
translational velocity
Since all of these things minimise the mass of the propellant
used, and since pressure is proportional to the mass of
propellant present to be accelerated as it pushes on the
engine, and since from Newton's third law the pressure that
acts on the engine also reciprocally acts on the propellant, it
turns out that for any given engine the speed that the
propellant leaves the chamber is unaffected by the chamber
pressure (although the thrust is proportional). However,
speed is significantly affected by all three of the above
factors and the exhaust speed is an excellent measure of
the engine propellant efficiency. This is termed exhaust
velocity, and after allowance is made for factors that can
reduce it, the effective exhaust velocity is one of the most
important parameters of a rocket engine (although weight,
cost, ease of manufacture etc. are usually also very
important).
For aerodynamic reasons the flow goes sonic ("chokes") at
the narrowest part of the nozzle, the 'throat'. Since
the speed of sound in gases increases with the square root
of temperature, the use of hot exhaust gas greatly improves
performance. By comparison, at room temperature the
speed of sound in air is about 340 m/s while the speed of
sound in the hot gas of a rocket engine can be over 1700
m/s; much of this performance is due to the higher
temperature, but additionally rocket propellants are chosen
 to be of low molecular mass, and this also gives a higher
velocity compared to air.
Expansion in the rocket nozzle then further multiplies the
speed, typically between 1.5 and 2 times, giving a
highly collimated hypersonic exhaust jet. The speed
increase of a rocket nozzle is mostly determined by its area
expansion ratio—the ratio of the area of the throat to the
area at the exit, but detailed properties of the gas are also
important. Larger ratio nozzles are more massive but are
able to extract more heat from the combustion gases,
increasing the exhaust velocity.
Nozzle efficiency is affected by operation in the atmosphere
because atmospheric pressure changes with altitude; but
due to the supersonic speeds of the gas exiting from a
rocket engine, the pressure of the jet may be either below or
above ambient, and equilibrium between the two is not
reached at all altitudes

COOLING METHOD

In rockets the coolant methods include:

1. uncooled (used for short runs mainly during testing)

2. ablative walls (walls are lined with a material that is
continuously vaporised and carried away).
3. radiative cooling (the chamber becomes almost white hot
and radiates the heat away)
4. dump cooling (a propellant, usually hydrogen, is passed
around the chamber and dumped)
5. regenerative cooling (liquid rockets use the fuel, or
occasionally the oxidiser, to cool the chamber via a
cooling jacket before being injected)
6. curtain cooling (propellant injection is arranged so the
temperature of the gases is cooler at the walls)
 7. film cooling (surfaces are wetted with liquid propellant,
which cools as it evaporates)

CONTENT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
1. ROCKET ENGINE
2. HOW TO ROCKET ENGINE WORKS
3. TYPES OF ROCKET ENGINE
4. ROCKET PHYSICS
5. THRUST
6. PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION
7. INTRODUCING TO PROPELLENT IN COMBUSTION
8. COMBUSTION CHAMBER
9. ROCKET NOZZLE

10.PROPELLENT EFFICIENCY

11.COOLING METHOD

12.APPLICATION
13.CONCLUSION