Combustion Instabilities in Liquid Rocket Engines

This is the first book to cover development and testing practices for liquid rocket engines in Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Combustion instability represents one of the most challenging problems in the development of propulsion engines. A famous example is the F-1 engine for the first stage of the Saturn V launch vehicles in the Apollo project. More than 2000 full engine tests and a vast number of design modifications were conducted to cure the instability problem.

This book contains first-hand information about testing and development practices for treating liquid rocket combustion-instability problems in Russia and the former Soviet Union, covering more than 50 years of research, with an emphasis placed on the advances made since 1970.

The book was prepared by a former R&D director of the Research Institute of Chemical Engineering, NIICHIMMASH, the largest liquid rocket testing center in the world, and has been carefully edited by three well-known experts in the field.