Bhartiya Space Agency ISRO Marks A Landmark In Bhartiya Rocket Tech
- Ananya Sharma
- May 22, 2024
- 5 min read
Hello, Everyone!
9th of May,2024 marked a landmark for Bhartiya Space Agency ISRO in the design and manufacturing of rocket engines. In this blog post, we will delve into the nuances of the technology employed for engineering rocket engines i.e. additive manufacturing and its uses.
So let's get started.
On the 9th of May 2024, a fire test was executed on the rocket engine consisting of liquid rocket fuel. The engine was built using additive manufacturing technology, a significant landmark made in Bharatiya rocket tech.
Pic Source:TOI
But what is additive manufacturing technology?
It is also called 3D printing or additive layer manufacturing industrially. It is a computer-regulated phenomenon in which 3-D objects are created by laying down the material as a layer or in the form of a sheet. The mechanism ensures the building of objects having geometric shapes with accuracy or precision.
The objects are manufactured by laying down material in layers i.e. one by one of each layer. This is opposite to the conventional manufacturing technique which demands machinery or other mechanisms for the removal of extra material.
The engine is used in the 4th stage of Bharat's PSLV. The hypergolic mix of liquid rocket fuels -monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetraoxide.
What is a hypergolic mixture of liquid rocket fuels?
The hypergolic mixture of rocket fuels is a mixture of liquid fuels that are highly toxic and react instantaneously. In usual terms, the rocket fuels employed are hydrazine, monomethylhydrazine, nitrogen tetraoxide, unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine, and oxidizer.
At room temperature or ordinary condition
These are employed in multiple diverse kinds of rocket engines as well as aircraft systems for the sake of propulsion and hydraulic power for instance:
->Orbitting Satellites
->Mannned Satellites
->Deep Space Probes
So what did the rocket engine do?
In the rocket engine, the liquid fuels -monomethyl hydrazine & nitrogen tetraoxide were burned for a span of 665 seconds -which is a big landmark.
What is monomethyl hydrazine? Why is it used as a liquid fuel in rocket engines?
Monomethylhydreazine is extremely poisonous and volatile -readily converts into vapor at room temperature and has a chemical formula CH6N2. It is derived from hydrazine -a colourless possessing a smell similar to ammonia and it is a form of a hydronitrogen compound.
Hydrazine is employed in rockets as a fuel because it readily reacts with oxygen to form nitrogen gas and water vapor with a release of heat {exothermically}. The thrust of the rocket is offered by the heat released and the gas molecules.
Monomethylhydrazine is a colorless and clear fluid and is extensively used as a missile and rocket fuel in various military applications in chemical-based power sources and as a chemical intermediate which is a compound formed during the middle stages of a chemical reaction or a series of a chemical reaction and is subsequently used up in the formation of the final product i.e. they facilitate the transformation from reactants to products.
What is Nitrogen Tetraoxide?
The nitrogen tetraoxide or dinitrogen tetraoxide is the PSLV storable liquid oxidizer of PSLV -the workhouse of ISRO. The chemical formula for Nitrogen Tetraoxide is N2O4. The oxidizer is a hypergolic fuel employed with a hydrazine-derived rocket fuel.
About PSLV...What is PSLV and its features?
The Bharat's PSLV -Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle is a maiden launch vehicle of our country comprising liquid stages. Because of PSLV's continual high performance in deploying many satellites, it is referred to as the "Workhouse of ISRO".
Features Of PSLV:
The launch vehicle PSLV has launched multitudes of Bharatiya and international customer satellites.
2. Owing to its unprecedented reliability PSLV is also useful in deploying many satellites into different types of orbits called geosynchronous and geo-stationary satellites.
3. The launch vehicle has a supreme potential to deploy multitudes of payloads into orbit.
4. The cascade of repetitive successes and having the potential to launch multiple satellites has earned PSLV recognition of being the most reliable, affordable, and multipurpose launch vehicle worldwide.
According to ISRO, the pioneering laser power bed process has significantly reduced 14 engine parts to one piece. It remarkably ruled out nineteen welding joints and has considerably saved the use of raw material in every rocket engine. The additive manufacturing process has used 302 pounds /135 kgs of metal powder in contrast to the massive 1,245 pounds /565 Kg of various forgings and sheets which were required with the conventional technique.
Besides reducing the raw material, the production time has also reduced by 60% as per ISRO and it has also posted on its X handle regarding the same. It posted that it has seamlessly conducted a long-duration fire test of a PS4 engine- upper stage /4th stage engine which has been remodeled for the sake of production through pioneering additive manufacturing process and engineered in the Bharatiya industry.
But what is the laser power bed process?
It is a kind of additive manufacturing process in which the parts are created by integrating materials rather than removing excess materials through techniques such as milling.
The laser beam is leveraged to liquidify the powder laid in every layer. This powder is being spread by a recoater blade also called roller spreads.
Owing to the combustible property of the powder, the laser power bed fusion mechanism is done under the inert gases-gases that do not undergo chemical reactions, such as argon or in a vacuum.
After manufacturing the parts; they are joined by welding to the build plate and additional support structures.are employed as well.
Now let us again focus on PSLV features.
The PSLV having an altitude of 44 mts,2.8 mts diameter and 320 tonnes of weight having four stages is one of our country's workhouse launches apart from LVM-3.
The rocket with excellent payload capability can deploy up to massive 3,680 pounds /1750 Kg of payloads to sun-synchronous polar orbits at an altitude of 370 miles /600 Km.
But what is a sun-synchronous polar orbit? And what is a polar orbit?
Satellites in polar orbits travel from north to south, passing each Earth's poles at low altitudes
While not perfectly polar, deviations within 20 to 30 degrees qualify.
A special type, sun-synchronous orbit, is like clockwork, always crossing the same spot on Earth at the same local time.
This consistent view is crucial for scientists to track changes over time, like weather patterns or deforestation, by capturing images under similar lighting conditions. These speedy satellites, traveling at 7.5 km per sec at an altitude of 600-800 km, are often timed for constant dawn or dusk to avoid Earth's shadow.
Conclusively, we can say that the laser bed power technique -an additive manufacturing technique has significantly reduced raw material usage and production time.
References:
The blog highlights ISRO's breakthrough in rocket technology with additive manufacturing. It explains the process, features of PSLV, and the significance of the laser power bed technique, emphasizing efficiency gains.
Excellent information....brilliantly presented😊☺️