16.512
Rocket Propulsion
Chemical rocket propulsion systems for launch, orbital, and interplanetary flight. Modeling of solid, liquid-bipropellant, and hybrid rocket engines. Thermochemistry, prediction of specific impulse. Nozzle flows including real gas and kinetic effects. Structural constraints. Propellant feed systems, turbopumps. Combustion processes in solid, liquid, and hybrid rockets. Cooling; heat sink, ablative, and regenerative.
Fall 2005
Topics
- Introduction
- Rocket Nozzles and Thrust
- Review of Ideal Nozzle Fluid Mechanics
- Nozzle Off-Design Operation and Non-Idealities
- Effects of Particles in Nozzle Flow
- Convective Heat Transfer: Reynolds Analogy
- Convective Heat Transfer: Other Effects
- Liquid Cooling
- Ablative Cooling, Film Cooling
- Radiation Heat Transfer and Cooling
- Review of Equilibrium Thermochemistry
- Examples of Chemical Equilibrium
- Non-Equilibrium Flows
- Selection of Propellant Mixtures
- Solid Propellants: Design Goals and Constraints
- Solid Propellants: Other Topics
- Liquid Propellants
- Combustion of Liquid Propellants
- Liquid Motors: Injection and Mixing
- Liquid Motors: Stability (Low Frequency)
- Liquid Motors: Stability (High Frequency)
- Pressurization and Pump Cycles
- Basic Turbomachine Performance
- Turbopumps
- Turbines
- Mechanical Design of Turbomachinery
- Rotordynamics Problems
- Dynamics of Turbopump Systems: The Shuttle Engine
- Active Control of Rockets
- Orbital Mechanics: Review, Staging
- Performance to LEO
- Performance to GEO
- Impulsive and Low-Thrust Maneuvers in Space
- Future Developments
Readings
- Sutton, George, and Oscar Biblarz. Rocket Propulsion Elements . New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 2000. ISBN: 0471326429.
- Hill, Philip and Carl Peterson. Mechanics and Thermodynamics of Propulsion . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991. ISBN: 0201146592.
- Rohsenow, Warren, James Hartnett, and Young Cho. Handbook of Heat Transfer . New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1998. ISBN: 0070535558.
- McAdams, William Henry. Heat Transmission . Melbourne, FL: Krieger Publishing, 1985, pp. 82-97. ISBN: 0898748763.
- Hagemann, Gerald, Hans Immich, Thong Van Nguyen, and Gennady Dumnov. “Advanced Rocket Nozzles.” Journal of Propulsion and Power 14, no. 5 (September-October 1998).
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: 16.50 or permission of instructor Acad Year 2027-2028: G (Fall) Acad Year 2028-2029: Not offered 3-0-9 units
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2005
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.