Combustion Devices designs, manufactures, and tests the injector, chamber, and nozzle that turn propellant into thrust. We bring together analysis and hands-on work to build hardware for the extreme conditions inside a liquid rocket engine.
01Combustion Devices owns the engine itself: the injector that meters and mixes propellant, the chamber where it burns, and the throat and nozzle that turn that pressure into thrust. Sizing any of them means working backwards from the rocket's performance goals through the propellants, the operating pressure, and the heat the hardware has to survive.02That sizing starts as a trade study. Ambient specific impulse swept against mixture ratio, one curve per nozzle expansion ratio, is how a performance target turns into a chamber pressure and a nozzle worth machining.03Analysis ends in a dimensioned drawing. Current development centres on an ablative chamber built for rapid testing — a liner that gradually wears away, carrying combustion heat off the chamber wall with it.04We manufacture our own hardware. Chamber and nozzle components are turned and milled in the shared shop rather than ordered in, which keeps the distance from a CAD change to a part in hand short enough to iterate on.05A component held in the lathe chuck, faced and grooved. Bore, wall thickness, and surface finish are settled here rather than in CAD, and they decide whether a part seats square and whether a joint holds pressure.06Concentric steps cut into a finished face, tool marks still on the metal. Detail at this scale is what a drawing has to specify and what the shop has to hit for the assembly above it to go together at all.07Engine hardware bolted to the test stand. Beyond the engine we build the igniter, the stand, and the water deluge that limits exhaust damage — and we work with Fluid Systems and Electrical & Controls to match the engine to its propellant supply and its firing sequence.
