Thermal Buckling of Deflector Plate (without water) Load Stress on Deflector Plate (without water)

Welp, it has been quite a while since the last update. I just wrapped up my 6th week of Purdue and I can't be more satisfied with my experience so far. Most of this satisfaction should be owed to Dr. Jensen, my ME 164 professor, and Purdue Space Program - Active Controls.

The images you see above are all performed in Siemens Simcenter NASTRAN, and were designed from scratch. The stress loads are derived from the exit characteristics of our motor, while the thermal buckling comes from heat stagnation on the surface of the plate. These simulations are not very robust and accurate as they omit some important factors (such as water cooling), but good enough for preliminary testing.

I have learned more about CAD (specifically FEA and manufacturing drawings) in the past 6 weeks than I have in 4 years of high school. I am not sure how much I can talk about my work at PSP, but my current project consists of creating a flame deflector for a 40 second hotfire of our VTVL vehicle. This has been logistically very challenging as we are working with steel, rather than ceramic tiling/ablatives.

The current assembly is being built up in NX and has been going steadily (for a 2 person team). Last major challenge is to figure out the water-cooling system. The current idea is for holes to be drilled directly into the face of the deflector plate, and high pressure water run through the back of the plate and on to the surface through the holes, cooling down the surface of the deflector.

Once the final assembly is complete I will run final FEA for the full plate including the supporting structure, and create a preliminary design review presentation so manufacturing of the initial version may begin. After the initial manufacturing is done, hydrostatic testing will be performed for the water-cooling system and notes taken.

I am really hoping to publish a short technical report once our project mostly comes to an end as I would like to provide other collegiate or non-collegiate teams access to the insight we gained during the testing and fabrication of the flame deflector. Especially, with the materials and constraints given to us.

As for this website as a whole, I will be updating much more frequently as I wil have more to talk about in terms of projects.

Evan