Design Methodology for the Performance, Weight, and Economic Assessment of Chemical Rocket Engines

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Design Methodology for the Performance, Weight, and Economic Assessment of Chemical Rocket Engines

Frank, Christopher P. / Pinon-Fischer, Olivia J. / Mavris, Dimitri N. / Tyl, Clémence M.

A design methodology is presented that supports the design of future aerospace rocket-powered vehicles. In particular, it provides the capabilities to rapidly evaluate the performance, weight, size, and lifecycle costs of all chemical rocket engines at a conceptual level. By leveraging cycle-based approaches and surrogate modeling techniques, the performance of all chemical rocket engines can be evaluated with an accuracy of 3%, whereas it divides the execution time by a factor of $10^{5}$ compared to current physics-based models. New mass-estimating relationships are developed for estimating the weight and the size of solid engines with an improved accuracy compared to existing models. Physics-based models built around the key design drivers are used for the weight and size estimation of liquid and hybrid engines. Although existing cost-estimating relationships are used to evaluate the lifecycle costs of solid and liquid engines, a more physics-based model is developed for hybrid engines. Although it supports complex multiobjective optimizations and rapid trade-off analyses, this environment is also the first of its sort able to estimate the lifecycle costs of hybrid rocket engines.