Design, fabrication and experiment of the micro solid propellant rocket engine with a changeable nozzle

The design, fabrication and experiment of a novel micro solid propellant rocket engine with a changeable nozzle is presented. Micro rocket engine is an ideal high-accuracy and high thrust-weight ratio power system. It plays an important role in the attitude control, speed adjustment, gravity compensation and orbit change of microspacecraft. The presented engine is made by bonding the fabricated silicon plate with BF33 glass. The engine consists of a combustion chamber, three venting channels and a nozzle. The main structure of the engine is manufactured on the plane of a silicon plate using the MEMS DRIE technology. The fabrication direction is cross direction, allowing the nozzle to be changeable. This helps improve the efficiency of the propelling engine, simplify the fabrication process and increase the precision of the fabrication. The propellant chosen for the engine is the HTPB compound propellant. The cross-direction fabrication process, the preparation and installation of the propellant and the ignition experiment of the engine is presented in detail.