Analysis and Design for a Dual Expander Cycle Rocket Engine
As a Propulsion Intern at Orbital Ops, I built in-house code to thoroughly model the supercritical flow and heating within the engine thrust chamber assembly. I also wrote several tools that simulated the coupled combustion and flow dynamics of Orbital Ops' cryogenic test stand, with an internal algorithm capable of refining existing engine models according to collected test data./p>
Over the course of the summer, I refined the accuracy of the simulations I built from scratch by developing numerical techniques specialized to pseudocritical transitions and reworking the entire datastructure into a performant object oriented system. Compared to the first version of the simulation code I wrote, I was able to improve runtime by a factor of seven, and reduce numerical error by a fair margin.
