Welcome to the UALR Hybrid Rocket Facility Homepage. The Hybrid Rocket Facility is a part of the UALR Combustion Diagnostics Laboratory and is run by faculty and staff of the Applied Science Department. Projects are supported at the Facility by grants and contracts with NASA and various aerospace companies. The facility currently houses a 2 X 10 inch labscale hybrid rocket thruster which provides testing routinely to the 500 psi level, and can be outfitted to provide pressures to 1000 psi if necessary. Runs are fully instrumented, and provide pressure curves and regression rates for a variety of predetermined firing conditions. Additional instrumentation is available to monitor IR and UV-Vis emissions, absorption, and laser based diagnostics including Raman and LIF. The facility provides graduate and undergraduate researchers with the opportunity to investigate rocket performance, fuel technology, and measurement techniques. The Combustion Lab also includes CFD, numeric, and other computational capabilities, using one or more SGI, DEC Alpha, or Linux based systems.
Working with a
NASA EPSCoR Award/
Arkansas EPSCoR.
Hybrid Rocket Facility Industrial Sponsors: Hercules Aerospace and McDonnell-Douglas have supported grants or contracts which have utilized the facility.
Links to UALR Combustion Researchers Homepages
Links to Combustion, Rocket, and Propellant Journals
Other Hybrid Rocket Homepages
Contact Information: If you would like more information about the laboratory, such as reprints or more detail on capabilities, please use the address below to contact us. If you are a student interested in studies leading to the PhD in Applied Science (Applied Chemistry, Applied Physics, Engineering Science, or Applied Computing), especially to include combustion studies, please request an application packet. We'll be glad to have something sent out to you.
Dr. Keith Hudson, Lab Director (501) 569-8211
(hudson@hybrid.ualr.edu)