The 46th AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference happened a few weeks back down in Nashville, and things have finally stabilized around here long enough for me to write about it! I had a great time attending all sorts of presentations on cool state-of-the-art chemical rocket propulsion technologies of all flavors (solid, liquid, and hybrid) — the problem was that there just wasn’t enough time to head to all of the presentations I wanted to see. Some of the highlights of the event included meeting Dr. Ken Kuo and Dr. Luigi DeLuca (above), both of whom are titans of the field, the Moog party on Tuesday night and running into Luke Colby from Scaled (it’s a small world!), giving my presentation, seeing my old compressible flow professor as session chair of TWO sessions (go Dr. Marcu!), seeing two of Martin Summerfield’s students battle it out during a presentation (Herman Krier and Luigi DeLuca, like watching lions fighting on the savanna — you step back and watch in awe), and being herded into the hotel basement with all the other attendees for a tornado warning. More details on the sessions I attended and more photos after the jump.

I started out at Niklas Wingborg’s presentation on GAP/ADN propellants, in which he discussed the development and processing of test motors containing just under 7 lbs of propellant, and had some beautiful static firing videos and results. Their spray prilling process is really nice, and seems to avoid many of the hazards of mechanical (emulsion) prilling that we’ve been working around lately. The presentation was really quite inspirational.

The first of my labmates to go was Stephen Bluestone, talking about his development of propellants using dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) binder. DCPD shows a lot of promise for future propellants; it has a viscosity like that of water when being processed, but maintains tremendous strength, and so can be loaded up with tremendous amounts of solids. It also produces some incredibly quick-burning propellant. However, there are still issues with post-cure rheology; the polymer’s typical use is for things like snowmobile windshields, so it’s very hard. Bluestone’s work before he graduated focused mainly on finding a plasticizer for the polymer; we’ll see what comes of it in the future.

At this point on Monday, I made my presentation on numerical modeling (and experimental correlation) of nanoparticle dispersion in composite and double base propellants. It went quite well. Here I am with Dr. Son just after the presentation:

There was a lot of ADN work presented (it even got mentioned, albeit horribly mispronounced, at the opening speech on Monday morning). Another paper I found really cool was about the development of an ADN/water monopropellant for the replacement of hydrazine in spacecraft, presented by Georg Schulte (who also took the pic of me and Dr. Son – thanks!). The stuff not only was delivering a higher Isp than hydrazine, but also gave a higher density specific impulse – impressive! The main drawback was the need for significantly greater preheating of the cat bed before use, but this didn’t seem to be too much of an issue, as the speaker detailed a system that was currently in use on a spacecraft.

After a quick Starbucks run with Chris and Andrew, I headed up to the session on aluminum agglomeration, to see the new work coming out of SPLab. Dr. Filippo Maggi presented an excellent paper on prediction of agglomerate size, and Dr. DeLuca summarized the past ten years of the lab’s work in an awesome presentation on agglomeration across a variety of metals and intermetallics. The high speed videos of agglomerate formation which they showed were breathtaking. I would LOVE to go work with these guys for a semester or two… the quality of their work is awesome, and I’d love to get back to Italy, too…

Several papers were presented on work taking place under the umbrella of the Constellation program, each of which had a light patina of angst dusted on the surface (sigh). Andrew and I checked out a presentation on deep throttling for exploration engines (deeeeeeeeep throttling in the words of Steve…), which essentially rehashed most of the issues covered in a deep throttling project that we worked on for a kerosene biprop earlier this year. Good to know we got the bases covered, at least.

Monday night was the Young Professionals reception, and also the night we got hit with the tornado warning. With all the Purdue peeps there, we were bound to win something in the door prize raffle; two people took home copies of a book written by Purdue professor Jim Longuski (HAHA) and one got a blue and green AIAA tie. We all had an awesome time, even though we kind of looked like a cult in our Purdue Propulsion polos…

Tuesday morning was taken up by a set of presentations on erosive burning; the first was a numerical treatment by one of Tom Jackson’s students, and the second was a, um, philosophical (?) treatment by Dr. Bob Glick. I was kind of stoked to see Glick’s presentation, since I relied heavily on work that he and Lynn Caveny had performed a long time ago for my wire-enhanced burning rate paper. He delivered a hilarious, long-winded, roundabout talk about burning surface irregularities and how they require us all to throw out the QSHOD assumptions for computations. Yeah, saw that one coming. Very entertaining, though.

I also caught up with Dr. Marcu on Tuesday, in a session on large-scale LRE development. He was in great spirits, and we talked briefly about possibly collaborating on some turbine research. (Dr. Key, our resident turbine expert, seemed receptive to the idea when I told her.)

Tuesday night was the Moog party at the Wildhorse saloon. It was a really nice party with a live band on the big stage and an expansive dance floor; Moog was handing out cowboy hats, handkerchiefs, and boot-shaped coozies (which are AWESOME). I ran into a lot of people I didn’t know were there, which was really awesome; aerospace is a small world, and it’s great to see people around, we’re all like family. Jacob Dennis also somehow ended up with at least ten cowboy hats stacked on his head by the end of the night.

Wednesday was a packed day, with a GAP hybrid presentation to kick things off, followed by a presentation on CARS in LOX/methane engines (look for the hydrogen!), one on Boeing’s suggested replacement for Ares (surprise surprise, take a Delta IV and a couple of GEMs to boost cargo… didn’t see that one coming…), one from ESA on the development of large solids for the Vega vehicle (their test site is on Sardinia, SO JEALOUS), and ended with a nice series on combustion stability in solids and biprops, where I got to meet Fred Blomshield (anybody who’s been through my motor seminar has seen some of Dr. Blomshield’s static test videos) and cheer on our last Purdue presentation of the meeting, presented by Mark Pfeil.

The drive back was long in the dark, through several awesome thunderstorms. Chris somehow got the bright idea to use the cologne machine in the bathroom at a truck stop, which made the car ride a bit unbearable at times for the last few hours, but he was driving, so nobody else in the car could complain, really.

Overall, it was a great conference. Nashville was a neat place to have the conference; there was all sorts of cool nightlife to keep us from sleeping, so by the end of Wednesday I was totally zonked. But gathering loads of cool information, meeting tons of great people, and bonding with the lab was a really worthwhile experience. I can’t wait for JANNAF, ASM, and of course JPC next year… it’s gonna be in SAN DIEGO! See you there?

[Show as slideshow]

Posted August 5, 2010 in Propulsion Theory. Add Comment / Trackback