Propulsion

In the spring of 1992 the NASP Joint Program Office presented a final engine design called the E22A. It had a length of 60 feet and included an inlet ramp, cowled inlet, combustor, and nozzle. An isolator, located between the inlet and combustor, sought to prevent unstarts by processing flow from the inlet through a series of oblique shocks, which increased the backpressure from the combustor.

Program officials then constructed two accurately scaled test models. The Sub­scale Parametric Engine (SXPE) was built to one-eighth scale and had a length of eight feet. It was tested from April 1993 to March 1994. The Concept Demonstra­tor Engine (CDE), which followed, was built to a scale of 30 percent. Its length topped 16 feet, and it was described as “the largest airframe-integrated scramjet engine ever tested.”26

In working with the SXPE, researchers had an important goal in achieving com­bustion of hydrogen within its limited length. To promote rapid ignition, the engine used a continuous flow of a silane-hydrogen mixture as a pilot, with the silane ignit­ing spontaneously on exposure to air. In addition, to promote mixing, the model incorporated an accurate replication of the spacing between the fuel-injecting struts and ramps, with this spacing being preserved at the model’s one-eighth scale. The combustor length required to achieve the desired level of mixing then scaled in this fashion as well.

The larger CDE was tested within the Eight-Foot High-Temperature Tunnel, which was Langleys biggest hypersonic facility. The tests mapped the flowfield entering the engine, determined the performance of the inlet, and explored the potential performance of the design. Investigators varied the fuel flow rate, using the combustors to vary its distribution within the engine.

Boundary-layer effects are important in scramjets, and the tests might have rep­licated the boundary layers of a full-scale engine by operating at correspondingly higher flow densities. For the CDE, at 30 percent scale, the appropriate density would have been 1/0.3 or 3-3 times that of the atmospheric density at flight alti­tude. For the SXPE, at one-eighth scale, the test density would have shown an eight­fold increase over atmospheric. However, the SXPE used an arc-heated test facility that was limited in the power that drove its arc, and it provided its engine with air at only one-fiftieth of that density. The High Temperature Tunnel faced limits on its flow rate and delivered its test gas at only one-sixth of the appropriate density.

Engineers sought to compensate by using analytical methods to determine the drag in a full-scale engine. Still, this inability to replicate boundary-layer effects meant that the wind-tunnel tests gave poor simulations of internal drag within the test engines. This could have led to erroneous estimates of true thrust, net of drag. In turn, this showed that even when working with large test models and with test facilities of impressive size, true simulations of the boundary layer were ruled out from the start.27

For takeoff from a runway, the X-30 was to use a Low-Speed System (LSS). It comprised two principal elements: the Special System, an ejector ramjet; and the Low Speed Oxidizer System, which used LACE.28 The two were highly synergistic. The ejector used a rocket, which might have been suitable for the final ascent to orbit, with ejector action increasing its thrust during takeoff and acceleration. By giving an exhaust velocity that was closer to the vehicle velocity, the ejector also increased the fuel economy.

The LACE faced the standard problem of requiring far more hydrogen than could be burned in the air it liquefied. The ejector accomplished some derichen – ing by providing a substantial flow of entrained air that burned some of the excess. Additional hydrogen, warmed in the LACE heat exchanger, went into the fuel tanks, which were full of slush hydrogen. By melting the slush into conventional liquid hydrogen (LH ), some LACE coolant was recycled to stretch the vehicles fuel supply.29

There was good news in at least one area of LACE research: deicing. LACE systems have long been notorious for their tendency to clog with frozen moisture within the air that they liquefy. “The largest LACE ever built made around half a pound per second of liquid air,” Paul Czysz of McDonnell Douglas stated in 1986. “It froze up at six percent relative humidity in the Arizona desert, in 38 seconds.” Investigators went on to invent more than a dozen methods for water alleviation. The most feasible approach called for injecting antifreeze into the system, to enable the moisture to condense out as liquid water without freezing. A rotary separator eliminated the water, with the dehumidified air being so cold as to contain very little residual water vapor.30

The NASP program was not run by shrinking violets, and its managers stated that its LACE was not merely to operate during hot days in the desert near Phoenix. It was to function even on rainy days, for the X-30 was to be capable of flight from anywhere in the world. At NASA-Lewis, James Van Fossen built a water-alleviation system that used ethylene glycol as the antifreeze, spraying it directly onto the cold tubes of a heat exchanger. Water, condensing on those tubes, dissolved some of the glycol and remained liquid as it swept downstream with the flow. Fie reported that this arrangement protected the system against freezing at temperatures as low as ~55°F, with the moisture content of the chilled air being reduced to 0.00018 pounds in each pound of this air. This represented removal of at least 99 percent of the humidity initially present in the airflow.31

Pratt & Whitney conducted tests of a LACE precooler that used this arrange­ment. A company propulsion manager, Walt Lambdin, addressed a NASP technical review meeting in 1991 and reported that it completely eliminated problems of reduced performance of the precooler due to formation of ice. With this, the prob­lem of ice in a LACE system appeared amenable to control.32

It was also possible to gain insight into the LACE state of the art by considering contemporary work that was under way in Japan. The point of departure in that country was the H-2 launch vehicle, which first flew to orbit in February 1994. It was a two-stage expendable rocket, with a liquid-fueled core flanked by two solid boosters. LACE was pertinent because a long-range plan called for upgrades that could replace the solid strap-ons with new versions using LACE engines.33

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was developing the H-2 s second-stage engine, des­ignated LE-5. It burned hydrogen and oxygen to produce 22,000 pounds of thrust. As an initial step toward LACE, this company built heat exchangers to liquefy air for this engine. In tests conducted during 1987 and 1988, the Mitsubishi heat exchanger demonstrated liquefaction of more than three pounds of air for every pound of LH2. This was close to four to one, the theoretical limit based on the ther­mal properties of LH2 and of air. Still, it takes 34.6 pounds of air to burn a pound of hydrogen, and an all-LACE LE-5 was to run so fuel-rich that its thrust was to be only 6,000 pounds.

But the Mitsubishi group found their own path to prevention of ice buildup. They used a freeze-thaw process, melting ice by switching periodically to the use of ambient air within the cooler after its tubes had become clogged with ice from LH2. The design also provided spaces between the tubes and allowed a high-speed airflow to blow ice from them.34

LACE nevertheless remained controversial, and even with the moisture problem solved, there remained the problem of weight. Czysz noted that an engine with

100,0 pounds of thrust would need 600 pounds per second of liquid air: “The largest liquid-air plant in the world today is the AiResearch plant in Los Angeles, at 150 pounds per second. It covers seven acres. It contains 288,000 tubes welded to headers and 59 miles of 3/32-inch tubing.”35

Still, no law required the use of so much tubing, and advocates of LACE have long been inventive. A 1963 Marquardt concept called for an engine with 10,000 pounds of thrust, which might have been further increased by using an ejector. This appeared feasible because LACE used LH, as the refrigerant. This gave far greater effectiveness than the AiResearch plant, which produced its refrigerant on the spot by chilling air through successive stages.36

For LACE heat exchangers, thin-walled tubing was essential. The Japanese model, which was sized to accommodate the liquid-hydrogen flow rate of the LE – 5, used 5,400 tubes and weighed 304 pounds, which is certainly noticeable when the engine is to put out no more than 6,000 pounds of thrust. During the mid – 1960s investigators at Marquardt and AiResearch fabricated tubes with wall thick­nesses as low as 0.001 inch, or one mil. Such tubes had not been used in any heat exchanger subassemblies, but 2-mil tubes of stainless steel had been crafted into a heat exchanger core module with a length of 18 inches.37

Even so, this remained beyond the state of the art for NASP, a quarter-cen­tury later. Weight estimates for the X-30 LACE heat exchanger were based on the assumed use of З-mil Weldalite tubing, but a 1992 Lockheed review stated, “At present, only small quantities of suitable, leak free, З-mil tubing have been fabri­cated.” The plans of that year called for construction of test prototypes using 6-mil Weldalite tubing, for which “suppliers have been able to provide significant quanti­ties.” Still, a doubled thickness of the tubing wall was not the way to achieve low weight.38

Other weight problems arose in seeking to apply an ingenious technique for derichening the product stream by increasing the heat capacity of the LH2 coolant. Molecular hydrogen, H2, has two atoms in its molecule and exists in two forms: para and ortho, which differ in the orientation of the spins of their electrons. The ortho form has parallel spin vectors, while the para form has spin vectors that are oppositely aligned. The ortho molecule amounts to a higher-energy form and loses energy as heat when it transforms into the para state. The reaction therefore is exo­thermic.

The two forms exist in different equilibrium concentrations, depending on the temperature of the bulk hydrogen. At room temperature the gas is about 25 percent para and 75 percent ortho. When liquefied, the equilibrium state is 100 percent para. Hence it is not feasible to prepare LH2 simply by liquefying the room-tem­perature gas. The large component of ortho will relax to para over several hours, producing heat and causing the liquid to boil away. The gas thus must be exposed to a catalyst to convert it to the para form before it is liquefied.

These aspects of fundamental chemistry also open the door to a molecular shift that is endothermic and that absorbs heat. One achieves this again by using a cata­lyst to convert the LH, from para to ortho. This reaction requires heat, which is obtained from the liquefying airflow within the LACE. As a consequence, the air chills more readily when using a given flow of hydrogen refrigerant. This effect is sufficiently strong to increase the heat-sink capacity of the hydrogen by as much as 25 percent.39

This concept also dates to the 1960s. Experiments showed that ruthenium metal deposited on aluminum oxide provided a suitable catalyst. For 90 percent para-to – ortho conversion, the LACE required a “beta,” a ratio of mass to flow rate, of five to seven pounds of this material for each pound per second of hydrogen flow. Data published in 1988 showed that a beta of five pounds could achieve 85 percent con­version, with this value showing improvement during 1992. However, X-30 weight estimates assumed a beta of two pounds, and this performance remained out of reach.40

During takeoff, the X-30 was to be capable of operating from existing runways and of becoming airborne at speeds similar to those of existing aircraft. The low – speed system, along with its accompanying LACE and ejector systems, therefore needed substantial levels of thrust. The ejector, again, called for a rocket exhaust to serve as a primary flow within a duct, entraining an airstream as the secondary flow. Ejectors gave good performance across a broad range of flight speeds, showing an effectiveness that increased with Mach. In the SR-71 at Mach 2.2, they accounted for 14 percent of the thrust in afterburner; at Mach 3-2 this was 28.4 percent. Nor did the SR-71 ejectors burn fuel. They functioned entirely as aerodynamic devices.41

It was easy to argue during the 1980s that their usefulness might be increased still further. The most important unclassified data had been published during the 1950s. A good engine needed a high pressure increase, but during the mid-1960s studies at Marquardt recommended a pressure rise by a factor of only about 1.5, when turbojets were showing increases that were an order of magnitude higher.42 The best theoretical treatment of ejector action dated to 1974. Its author, NASA’s В. H. Anderson, also wrote a computer program called REJECT that predicted the performance of supersonic ejectors. However, he had done this in 1974, long before the tools of CFD were in hand. A 1989 review noted that since then “little attention has been directed toward a better understanding of the details of the flow mechanism and behavior.”43

Within the NASP program, then, the ejector ramjet stood as a classic example of a problem that was well suited to new research. Ejectors were known to have good effectiveness, which might be increased still further and which stood as a good topic for current research techniques. CFD offered an obvious approach, and NASP activities supplemented computational work with an extensive program of experi­ment.44

The effort began at GASL, where Tony duPont s ejector ramjet went on a static test stand during 1985 and impressed General Skantze. DuPont’s engine design soon took the title of the Government Baseline Engine and remained a topic of active experimentation during 1986 and 1987. Some work went forward at NASA – Langley, where the Combustion Heated Scramjet Test Facility exercised ejectors over the range of Mach 1.2 to 3-5- NASA-Lewis hosted further tests, at Mach 0.06 and from Mach 2 to 3-5 within its 10 by 10 foot Supersonic Wind Tunnel.

The Lewis engine was built to accommodate growth of boundary layers and placed a 17-degree wedge ramp upstream of the inlet. Three flowpaths were mounted side by side, but only the center duct was fueled; the others were “dummies” that gave data on unfueled operation for comparison. The primary flow had a pressure of 1,000 pounds per square inch and a temperature of 1,340°F, which simulated a fuel-rich rocket exhaust. The experiments studied the impact of fuel-to-air ratio on performance, although the emphasis was on development of controls.

Even so, the performance left much to be desired. Values of fuel-to-air ratio greater than 0.52, with unity representing complete combustion, at times brought “buzz” or unwanted vibration of the inlet structure. Even with no primary flow, the inlet failed to start. The main burner never achieved thermal choking, where the flow rate would rise to the maximum permitted by heat from burning fuel. Ingestion of the boundary layer significantly degraded engine performance. Thrust measurements were described as “no good” due to nonuniform thermal expansion across a break between zones of measurement. As a contrast to this litany of woe, operation of the primary gave a welcome improvement in the isolation of the inlet from the combustor.

Also at GASL, again during 1987, an ejector from Boeing underwent static test. It used a markedly different configuration that featured an axisymmetric duct and a fuel-air mixer. The primary flow was fuel-rich, with temperatures and pressures similar to those of NASA-Lewis. On the whole, the results of the Boeing tests were encouraging. Combustion efficiencies appeared to exceed 95 percent, while mea­sured values of thrust, entrained airflow, and pressures were consistent with com­pany predictions. However, the mixer performance was no more than marginal, and its length merited an increase for better performance.45

In 1989 Pratt & Whitney emerged as a major player, beginning with a subscale ejector that used a flow of helium as the primary. It underwent tests at company facilities within the United Technologies Research Center. These tests addressed the basic issue of attempting to increase the entrainment of secondary flow, for which non-combustible helium was useful. Then, between 1990 and 1992, Pratt built three versions of its Low Speed Component Integration Rig (LSCIR), testing them all within facilities of Marquardt.

LSCIR-1 used a design that included a half-scale X-30 flowpath. It included an inlet, front and main combustors, and nozzle, with the inlet cowl featuring fixed geometry. The tests operated using ambient air as well as heated air, with and with­out fuel in the main combustor, while the engine operated as a pure ramjet for several runs. Thermal choking was achieved, with measured combustion efficiencies lying within 2 percent of values suitable for the X-30. But the inlet was unstarted for nearly all the runs, which showed that it needed variable geometry. This refinement was added to LSCIR-2, which was put through its paces in July 1991, at Mach 2.7. The test sequence would have lasted longer but was terminated prematurely due to a burnthrough of the front combustor, which had been operating at 1,740°E Thrust measurements showed only limited accuracy due to flow separation in the nozzle.

LSCIR-3 followed within months. The front combustor was rebuilt with a larger throat area to accommodate increased flow and received a new ignition system that used silane. This gas ignited spontaneously on contact with air. In tests, leaks devel­oped between the main combustor, which was actively cooled, and the uncooled nozzle. A redesigned seal eliminated the leakage. The work also validated a method for calculating heat flux to the wall due to impingement of flow from primaries.

Other results were less successful. Ignition proceeded well enough using pure silane, but a mix of silane and hydrogen failed as an ignitant. Problems continued to recur due to inlet unstarts and nozzle flow separation. The system produced 10,000 pounds of thrust at Mach 0.8 and 47,000 pounds at Mach 2.7, but this perfor­mance still was rated as low.

Within the overall LSS program, a Modified Government Baseline Engine went under test at NASA-Lewis during 1990, at Mach 3-5. The system now included hydraulically-operated cowl and nozzle flaps that provided variable geometry, along with an isolator with flow channels that amounted to a bypass around the combus­tor. This helped to prevent inlet unstarts.

Once more the emphasis was on development of controls, with many tests oper­ating the system as a pure ramjet. Only limited data were taken with the primaries on. Ingestion of the boundary layer gave significant degradation in engine perfor­mance, but in other respects most of the work went well. The ramjet operations were successful. The use of variable geometry provided reliable starting of the inlet, while operation in the ejector mode, with primaries on, again improved the inlet isolation by diminishing the effect of disturbances propagating upstream from the combustor.46

Despite these achievements, a 1993 review at Rocketdyne gave a blunt conclu­sion: “The demonstrated performance of the X-30 special system is lower than the performance level used in the cycle deck…the performance shortfall is primarily associated with restrictions on the amount of secondary flow.” (Secondary flow is entrained by the ejector’s main flow.) The experimental program had taught much concerning the prevention of inlet unstarts and the enhancement of inlet-combus­tor isolation, but the main goal—enhanced performance of the ejector ramjet—still lay out of reach.

Simple enlargement of a basic design offered little promise; Pratt & Whitney had tried that, in LSCIR-3, and had found that this brought inlet flow separation along with reduced inlet efficiency. Then in March 1993, further work on the LSS was canceled due to budget cuts. NASP program managers took the view that they could accelerate an X-30 using rockets for takeoff, as an interim measure, with the LSS being added at a later date. Thus, although the LSS was initially the critical item in duPont’s design, in time it was put on hold and held off for another day.47