Technical Paper
A Subscale Facility for Liquid Rocket Propulsion Diagnostics at Stennis Space Center
1991-04-01
911126
The Diagnostics Tested Facility (DTF) at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) in Mississippi was designed to provide a testbed for development of rocket engine exhaust plume diagnostics instrumentation. A 1200-lb thrust liquid oxygen (LOX)/gaseous hydrogen (GH2) thruster is used as the plume source for experimentation and instrument development. Theoretical comparative studies have been performed with aero-thermodynamic codes to ensure that the DTF thruster (DTFT) has been optimized to produce a plume with pressure and temperature conditions as much like the plume of the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) as possible. Operation of the DTFT is controlled by an icon-driven software program using a series of soft switches. Data acquisition is performed using the same software program. A number of plume diagnostics experiments have utilized the unique capabilities of the DTF.
