The West Midlands Branch
Presents
A Simple Combined Cycle Engine by Lucas Beveridge
Speaker: Lucas Beveridge
Date: Saturday 5th June 2021
Start Time: 17:00
End Time: 18:15
Venue: Via Zoom
A simple combined cycle engine incorporating features of both solid-fuel ramjets, and hybrid propellant rockets was examined for use in a single-stage launch vehicle, and as a booster in a two-stage vehicle. Paraffin was chosen as the solid fuel due to its high regression rate and relatively high performance. A hypothetical vehicle was examined: a lifting launcher with a hybrid propellant rocket mode and solid-fuel ram/scram jet mode. The vehicle had a takeoff mass of 319,500 kg. Approximate component masses were calculated to run 2D trajectory simulations of the flight and determine the engine performance and effective payload masses. Neither system was heavily optimized, but the SSTO version nonetheless has a payload fraction to LEO of roughly 3.38%, which is substantially greater than the 2% payload the all-rocket VenturestarTM vehicle would have had, and the two-stage version substantially out-performs the Falcon-9 with booster reuse.
Speaker – Lucas Beveridge
Lucas was born and raised in Oregon. From a very young age, he was inspired to be engineer and pursued electronics and model rockets. In high school, he led a group of fellow students in the Team America Rocketry Challenge, which went to the national finals in 2003. He then attended Embry Riddle Aeronautical University to pursue Aerospace Engineering and Space Physics and graduated in 2010 with a B.S. in Space Physics. Lucas got his masters in Nuclear Science and Engineering at Idaho State University in 2016, and completed his PhD in 2019. He began working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2018 as an R&D Engineer supporting non-destructive assay of nuclear materials. He currently works for an aerospace company in Denver Colorado developing nuclear propulsion for spacecraft.
Timetable
Meeting
• 16:55 – The meeting is available to join
• 17:00 – Welcome
• 17:05- A Simple Combined Cycle Engine by Lucas Beveridge
• 17:35 – Questions and Answers (we enable everyone’s microphone to allow an interactive Q&A session)
So, here’s the Plan/Joining Instructions!
1. Register for the Talk using the link below
2. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScZiH1P9-JgTHH7gUAJs_csbWL9HnIDwMsQoqc_4kxdQx8Cqg/viewform
3. Before the event, we will send you an email with the joining link for the meeting.
4. On the day, click meeting link (and follow the on-screen instructions to install Zoom if prompted)
Please Note
The Conference Call and Q & A sessions will be recorded (which may capture your name, picture, voice or video) and made available via the West Midlands Facebook group and possibly via the BIS HQ website. You consent to this by registering for the Conference Call/Q & A sessions.
