YJYONGQUAN JI
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RICE ECLIPSE · EDES 300 · WORK IN PROGRESS

Injector
Test Bed

A liquid rocket engine injector cold-flow test bed.

Designing a test bed to visualize spray patterns from Rice Eclipse’s liquid rocket engine injector. My work covers CAD design and preliminary structural FEA; fabrication and physical testing are still ahead.

My contributions

  • CAD design
  • ANSYS structural FEA
  • Load-case comparisons
About the design
CAD model of the injector test bed with a transparent PSU chamber, external tie rods, and downstream tank
Current CAD assembly. The test bed has not yet been fabricated.
WHEN & WHERE
Fall 2026
Rice University · EDES 300
PROJECT
Rice Eclipse
Liquid rocket engine
MY WORK
CAD design
Structural analysis
STATUS
Work in progress
Design and preliminary FEA
DESIGN CONCEPT

A transparent chamber for injector testing

The proposed layout combines a transparent polysulfone (PSU) chamber, a water tank, pressure sensing, back-pressure regulation, and waste collection. It is intended to make injector spray patterns visible during cold-flow testing.

System sketch showing the injector plate, PSU chamber, water tank, pressure transducer, regulation, and waste collection
Proposed system layout for injector cold-flow testing.
PRELIMINARY FEA

Stress and load cases

I used ANSYS to study stress concentrations in the chamber and assembly, then compared compression loads at 300 psi internal pressure.

Preliminary ANSYS equivalent stress distribution across the injector test bed assembly
Preliminary equivalent-stress distribution in the assembly.
ANSYS equivalent stress plot of the transparent PSU chamber
Static structural analysis of the PSU chamber.
Charts showing maximum equivalent stress and preliminary safety factor across compression loads at 300 psi internal pressure
Compression-load sweep at 300 psi internal pressure. The plotted safety factor is a preliminary tensile-strength-to-peak-stress ratio.
WORK IN PROGRESS

From analysis to hardware

Next steps are to refine the analysis and check material compatibility before machining, assembly, hydrostatic checks, and injector cold-flow testing.