RPA User Manual

Introduction

RPA is an acronym for Rocket Propulsion Analysis.

RPA is a rocket engine analysis tool for rocketry professionals, scientists, students and amateurs.

RPA is an easy-to-use multi-platform tool for the performance prediction of rocket engines. It features an intuitive graphical user interface with convenient grouping the input parameters and analysis results. RPA utilizes an expandable chemical species library based on NASA Glenn thermodynamic database, that includes data for numerous fuels and oxidizers, such as liquid hydrogen and oxygen, kerosene, hydrogen peroxide, MMH, and many others. With embedded species editor, the users may also easily define new propellant components, or import components from PROPEP or CEA2 species databases.

By providing a few engine parameters such as combustion chamber pressure, used propellant components, and nozzle parameters, the program obtains chemical equilibrium composition of combustion products, determines its thermodynamic properties, and predicts the theoretical rocket performance. The results of calculation can also be used to design combustion chambers, gas generators and preburners of the liquid propellant rocket engines.

The calculation method is based on robust, proven and industry-accepted Gibbs free energy minimization approach to obtain the combustion composition, analysis of nozzle flows with shifting and frozen chemical equilibrium, and calculation of engine performance for a finite- and infinite-area combustion chambers.

RPA is written in C++ programming language using following libraries: Qt, Qwt, libconfig++.

The program was written by Alexander Ponomarenko. You can contact him by sending an email to: contact@lpre.de

Last modified: February 22, 2011