HyEnD — Hybrid Engine Development
Propulsion & structures — solid propellant hybrid rocket engine
HyEnD — Hybrid Engine Development, University of Stuttgart
HyEnD is the University of Stuttgart's student rocketry team, developing hybrid rocket engines end to end. I worked in the propulsion/structures pole from October 2023 to January 2025.
This page is still being filled in with real build and test photos — for now, here's what the work actually involved.
Solid propellant grain development and testing
Hybrid engines pair a solid fuel grain with a liquid or gaseous oxidiser. Part of my work went into developing and testing the solid propellant side — grain formulation and characterisation ahead of static-fire testing.
Sizing the injector, modelling combustion performance
On the analysis side, I worked on two-phase-flow injector sizing and performance prediction: dimensioning the fuel segment, running O/F-ratio sweeps to find the operating point, and using NASA CEA-based combustion models to predict engine performance ahead of test firings — checking the design on paper before committing hardware to it.
Carbon-reinforced tank and combustion chamber construction
On the structures side: engine design and build, plus carbon-fibre-reinforced construction of the propellant tank and combustion chamber — the pressure vessels that have to survive both the structural loads and the thermal environment of a firing engine.