STUDENT // FOCUS
The first test firing of the Rotating Detonation Engine at UAH’s Johnson Research Center.
ROTATING DETONATION ENGINE TEST-FIRED FOR FIRST TIME AT UAH Mechanical and aerospace engineering master’s student Evan Unruh with his Rotating Detonation Engine at UAH’s Johnson Research Center.
A
new kind of rocket engine has been test-fired for the first time at UAH’s Johnson Research Center.
It’s called a Rotating Detonation Engine (RDE), and UAH mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) master’s student Evan Unruh says it took him about a year to design and build it through UAH’s Propulsion Research Center (PRC). Unruh is advised by Dr. Robert Frederick, PRC director. Seed funding was provided by Dr. Gabe Xu, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and a PRC associate, through the National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research: Connecting the Plasma Universe to Plasma Technology in Alabama (CPU2AL). “Once I have finished the developmental testing of the engine, Dr. Xu and
his student, Michaela Spaulding, will be
RDEs are a tantalizing engineering
using the engine for that program to
concept that could be transformative
research the effects of transient plasma
for rocket propulsion, offering better
ignition on the detonation reactions
fuel efficiency than continuous-burn
within the combustor,” says Unruh.
solid or liquid propellant engines if the
Besides Unruh, Dr. Frederick and Dr. Xu, the RDE team is Dr. David Lineberry, PRC research engineer; Tony Hall, PRC test engineer; James Venters, PRC undergraduate research assistant; Jon
inherent instabilities that make them run can be better controlled. Instead of a continuous burn, RDEs use a continuous spinning explosion to create supersonic gas and generate thrust.
Buckley, shop supervisor at the UAH
“As a concept, RDEs may facilitate the
Engineering Design and Prototyping
design of more efficient rocket engines.
Facility; Scott Claflin, director of power
This would enable rockets that could
innovations at Aerojet Rocketdyne; and
fly higher, faster and more efficiently,
Spaulding, a graduate student who
thereby enabling greater access to
is also working on detonation engine
space than what we see today,” says
research at the PRC.
Unruh, who completed his MAE under-
Claflin’s RDE expertise has come in an unofficial capacity, Unruh said, adding, “The Propulsion Research Center is open to working with companies that are
graduate career at UAH before going on to his master’s. “There are still practical roadblocks to overcome before detonation engines
interested in researching and develop-
become a viable option, but if there
ing detonation engines.”
weren’t, we wouldn’t need to research UAH.EDU/RESE ARCH
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