Wisconsin Space Program Completes Liquid Engine Hotfire

UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Space Program (WISP) is excited to announce their most recent accomplishment – successfully completing the group’s first liquid engine hotfire. After 11-months of designing, building, and testing, the team’s engine, Flamingo-1, hit 750 lbs. of thrust 3 times across 12 total seconds of burn time. Based on the group’s research, they think this is likely the 7^th most powerful rocket engine ever fired by an American collegiate team!

What is the significance of the hotfire?

As a student org competition team, WISP is building a rocket from scratch to compete in the FAROUT collegiate rocketry competition in June. Achieving this hotfire, is one of the first steps in ensuring their rocket’s success, but it can also be one of the trickiest things to accomplish. As Noah Levin, WISP president and 4^th year Mechanical Engineering student, noted, a series of 9 custom valves, pressure tanks, custom seals, and close to 100 tubing joints need to survive extremely high pressures and temperatures for the hotfire to succeed. If a group can achieve this, it is one of the biggest milestones they must overcome in preparing their rocket to reach over 1000 mph during launch.

What are Mach Diamonds?

In the picture below, if you look closely, you can see orange and purple diamonds in the exhaust flame. These diamonds are known as Mach diamonds and give the team a better understanding of how their engine is performing. Levin explains, “These diamonds are a series of pressure waves. The flow of gas wants to expand to a certain pressure after leaving the engine, but the ambient pressure won’t let it. The exhaust gets pushed around by the ambient pressure in a fashion where the flow expands, collapses into a diamond, overshoots and re-expands, and then collapses again (think of a sin wave). This series of events forms diamonds in the exhaust.” Not only are they pretty to look at but getting these shapes to form in the exhaust helps the team know they are on the right track.

What’s next?

The validation of this engine is an important milestone in the team’s journey to flying the first liquid fueled rocket in Wisconsin’s history. With more than 75 engineering students (mechanical, electrical, and aerospace engineers), this ambitious group is excited to continue to push their engine’s limits and put UW-Madison on the map in the collegiate rocketry world. Now that they have confidence in the engine’s abilities, WISP is sprinting to build the rest of the rocket!

Congratulations, WISP! We are honored to highlight this group’s success and look forward to cheering them on at their competition in June!

To follow WISP’s accomplishments and journey, check out their social media channels: Instagram, LinkedIn, Slack, Team’s Website.

Big thanks to Noah Levin for providing team insights and photos.