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Analysis

Sierra Engineering has demonstrated proven expertise with a wide range of analysis tools. 

[Performance Prediction]     [Combustion Stability]     [Thermal Analysis]     [Structural Analysis]

Performance prediction is typically the first aspect of characterizing an engine, and certainly the most fun.

We utilize several rocket analysis tools to help us predict performance and design engine components:

The above tools allow us to meet mission requirements, and also provide early predictions of rocket engine performance critical to your propulsion system.

Our analyses account for the following performance conditions:

 
  • Kinetic Losses
  • Mixing Losses
  • Vaporization Losses
  • Divergence Losses
  • Throat Erosion
  • Boundary Layer Losses
  • Particle Impingement (Solids/Gels)
  • Two-Phase Losses (Solids/Gels)

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Prevent catastrophic failures from combustion-acoustic interactions in your rocket engine combustion chamber!

F-1 engine experienced severe instabilities that were solved by de-tuning the injector Our experienced engineers use the state-of-the-art ROCket Combustor Interactive Design (ROCCID) analysis tool to assess the stability characteristics and improve the stability margin in your rocket engine combustion chamber.

Our analyses of your rocket engine will assess:
  • high frequency injection and burning coupled instabilities
  • low frequency chug margin

During early design of your rocket engine, our engineers can provide a support program to:
  • assess stability issues
  • recommend corrective design modifications to enhance stability margins
  • Help you develop an industry-standard stability demonstration test program

Our engineers can help you design, tune and test design modifications to improve your stability:
  • Thrust chamber baffles
  • Helmholtz resonators
  • quarter wave cavities
  • injector de-tuning

Visit our RocketWebSM site to check out some of our more popular analytical tools used in the propulsion industry for assessment of combustion stability.

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Sierra Engineering can support your full range of heat transfer design and analysis needs

Sierra Analysts have many years of experience predicting the extreme environments of liquid rocket engine combustors and other related components. Many of Sierra's predictions have been followed with relevant testing which allowed correlation of the tools and development of improved predictive algorithms. Sierra understands how to analyze and design rocket engine combustors so that they meet life requirements.

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Sierra has developed analytical models based on:

Sierra has demonstrated experience in the application of single and two phase cooling flows to:

Sierra’s experience in these areas can reduce the development risk of your program.

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Thermo-Structural Analysis

Extreme transient environments and plastic deformation make accurate structural analysis of rocket engines very difficult. Sierra has demonstrated the ability to accurately predict structural integrity for these demanding thermo-structural problems. Below are some examples of injector, chamber, and pressure vessel thermo-structural analyses.

Images provided courtesy of Convergence Engineering

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