SPECIAL AEROSPACE SERVICES — Department of Defense STTR Phase I: AF18A-T009

Description

In partnership with the Colorado School of Mines Alliance for the Development of Additive Processing Technologies and with support from the Johns Hopkins University Energetic Research Group, Special Aerospace Services will provide the Air Force with characterization of fully dense Selective Laser Melted GRCop-84 subjected to a variety of manipulations that affect key performance metrics for regeneratively cooled liquid rocket engine components. These manipulations will locally control microstructure, surface roughness, and geometry to optimize the regenerative cooling and flow performance, increase engine lifetime (# of restarts and total firing time), decrease weight, and allow for increased combustion performance (temperature and pressure).Study in Phase I will demonstrate the performance and survivability of a variety of localized manipulations to TRL 4-5 using lab-simulated engine environments. SAS will produce a prototype GRCop-84 LRE component with regenerative cooling features using the studied property manipulations to locally optimize performance of the component.Study in Phase II will demonstrate a locally optimized regeneratively cooled LRE component to TRL 6-7. SAS will work with commercialization partner Orbital ATK to develop flight qualified AM hardware with local optimization by end of Phase III.