A light-weight but strong nose cone for the HyShot scramjet

Miners with a nose for rocket science

Reference: 06/19

The CSIRO has been called in to design and manufacture a critical component for the HyShot scramjet test program.

• 10 February 2006

Dr Philip Teakle from CSIRO Exploration and Mining has been asked by the University of Queensland’s Centre for Hypersonics to make a light-weight but strong nose cone for the rocket which will accelerate to 11,000km/h and reach a height of around 400km.

Scramjets are air-breathing supersonic combustion ramjet engines which have the potential to revolutionise the launching of small space payloads, such as communication satellites, and commercial travel by cutting the flight time for passenger planes from Sydney to London down to two hours.

The HyShot program asked for Dr Teakle’s help to solve a weight problem with the nose cone which is blown off the rocket once it has left Earth’s atmosphere. After the cone has been blown off, experiments can be conducted during re-entry.

The rocket needed a two metre long, 60cm diameter nose cone that would weight just 16kgs.

Dr Teakle’s expertise is in high strength, low weight composite materials to make very light but extraordinarily strong drill rods made from composites for drilling in mining.

There have been a number of challenges along the way for Dr Teakle, from programming the carbon fibre winding rig to finding a curing oven in Brisbane large enough to take a rocket nose cone.

"Carbon fibre composites combine high strength, high stiffness and light weight with the ability to customise these properties through the way the final product is wound," Dr Teakle says.

"Manufacture of the nose cone was relatively simple, once we had understood the university’s requirements and we had discussed with them what was possible using the technique."

"When the shape of the nose cone was finalised, we were able to begin manufacturing moulds and calculate the optimum fibre pattern."

"The main part of the design was achieved within a month. However, manufacture took longer, as large moulds had to be made to a fairly high degree of accuracy and with a very smooth finish. The actual filament winding and curing only took a couple of days."

"The whole process was an extremely interesting and unexpected detour in my work at CSIRO Exploration and Mining. I hope to be able to attend the launch at Woomera."

The next HyShot launch is scheduled for March this year at Woomera, South Australia.

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