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Upcoming Projects

There are a range of projects starting across the UK at our member institutions. The majority of these projects will commence in January 2025, although some begin in October 2024. Explore the application links below to find out more.

University

Industry
Partner

Project
Description

Application
Link

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In this project at the University of Glasgow, the student will be based out of the Space Propulsion and Deep Exploration (SPADE) lab within the Space and Exploration Technology (SET) research group. Working with Orbex, the student will focus on optimisation of rocket engine propellant feed systems components, through a design process involving ideation, optimisation, simulation, manufacture, and experimental validation. This project will also have a focus on the utilisation of additive manufacturing of complex components.

 

This student will have the unique opportunity to contribute to space launch hardware while working in conjunction with the Orbex propulsion team, operating with industry leaders and leveraging state-of-the-art facilities and resources.

This PhD will be based at the University of Sheffield as part of the new School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil engineering, working within the Aerospace Research Institute. This project will use careful control of additive manufacturing process parameters to improve the performance of rocket engines and injectors and enhance their design freedom.

 

Advanced combustion chamber designs will be printed in-house (at the Royce Discovery Centre) in materials such as CuCrZr and GrCOP-42. These copper alloys combine high conductivity with improved temperature resistance. The PhD research will make use of novel cooling techniques such as transpiration cooling, generative design and topology optimisaiton to provide combustion chamber thermal control and enable the operation at increased temperatures and efficiencies, while maintaining robustness.

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Kingston University has developed and pioneered the use of two innovative technologies in recent years that we hope will have a significant impact on the space and launch propulsion sectors. The first is the development of Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) to measure the internal combustion and regression of a hybrid propellant space propulsion system. The second is the gelation/solidification of hydrocarbon propellants using cholesteryl, sugar-based and amide-based gelators. The aim of this PhD is to investigate novel propellants for use in hybrid propellant propulsion systems and to analyse their combustion properties using ECT and machine learning-driven data analysis.

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skyrora

Coming soon!

Coming soon!

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The project will be carried out at the University of Surrey and supported by the company URA Thrusters Ltd. The project focuses on the development of electrothermal thrusters to be used in a high-efficiency solar-electric upper-stage for launch vehicles to enhance the range of reachable orbits. The project comprises plasma physics and engineering modelling, design, prototyping and testing of the thrusters under investigation.

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To enable SSTO, airbreathing propulsion intakes are required at launch and through atmospheric flight. The stability and compression ratio of these intakes are critical to the performance of the vehicle and must be understood fully. However, large velocity ranges and compressibility pose a challenge.

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Limitations in numerical modelling need to be supported by experiments in realistic flow fields. One of the key challenges in understanding and characterising these flows is the ability to simulate flow conditions both experimentally and numerically. The large velocity ranges, high levels of compressibility and complex three-dimensional flows around control surfaces and devices provide an extreme challenge to numerical models.

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Consequently, the limitations in numerical modelling in this area need to be supported by experimental investigations carried out in static or ballistic tunnels. The development of suitable diagnostic and flow visualization techniques for such flows is required to fully characterize these flows.

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This PhD will be based at the University of Bristol as part of the CADE School of Engineering, working in conjunction with Airborne Engineering. The focus of the PhD will be on the use of Reinforcement Learning for the active control of rockets for both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial applications. As has been demonstrated by SpaceX, the use of reusable rockets can significantly reduce the cost of launches and can fundamentally change the commercial landscape and what is possible in terms of frequency and payload to orbit.

 

Building on previous work at Bristol in the development of Reinforcement Learning (RL) for the flight control of drones, this PhD will develop RL based flight control systems for manoeuvring and hovering rockets. For challenging manoeuvres and operations in a diverse range of environments, these offer the potential for a robust and adaptable approach to the control of rocket propelled vehicles. Representative models will be used for developing baseline controllers, simulation for RL based training and experimental tests for validation. Extensions of the terrestrial models will allow for application to moon and mars-based challenges for reuseable rockets.

Coming soon!

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Hydrogen for future space transportation will be held at Cranfield University with the support of Pulsar Fusion and Newton Launch Systems. Due to its low molecular mass and high flame temperature, hydrogen/oxygen is the highest performing conventional fuel for chemical space propulsion. However, this small molecular mass carries significant engineering challenges when storing hydrogen for extended periods (particularly in the vacuum of space).

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The project will investigate different alternatives of long-term storage (in particular cryo-compression) and the related delivery and combustion challenges of high-density hydrogen engines for refuellable planetary spacecrafts.

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The rotating detonation engine (RDE) has emerged as a feasible design to employ pressure-gain combustion in a highly compact and energy-dense rocket engine. In an RDE, one or multiple detonation waves propagate azimuthally within an annular combustion chamber. The rotating waves are maintained by feeding fuel and oxidiser continuously from a plenum. The number of simultaneously propagating detonations in an RDE is strongly dependent on the detailed local injection conditions, and in general forecasting its exact behaviour is difficult. There are presently no models for predicting RDE propulsion performance reliably.

Southampton have recently designed a new modular water-cooled RDE rocket engine. This PhD project will design and install an upgraded propellant delivery system and then set up this new water-cooled RDE experiment in full. Different hydrocarbon fuels such as methane, propane and ethylene will be tested primarily with gaseous oxygen. Corresponding three-dimensional simulations with our in-house software AMROC will also be employed in this project to model the rotating detonation waves in the chamber and quantify the influence of non-idealities on combustion efficiency and engine performance, including turbulent mixing, heat loss and in particular wall friction.

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