Case Study: Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering cools its rocket engine with Materialise metal 3D printing

How Metal 3D Printing Helps Cool DARE’s First Liquid-Fueled Rocket Engine

Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering (DARE), a student rocketry team at TU Delft, needed a way to cool its first cryogenic liquid-fueled rocket engine for Project Sparrow. The engine’s combustion chamber reaches extremely high temperatures, so the team needed a solution that could handle intense heat, fit tight design constraints, and be produced with limited resources. DARE turned to Materialise for metal 3D printing expertise, specifically to help design and produce an Inconel 718 volute.

Materialise optimized the volute for additive manufacturing, printed it at its Metal Competence Center in Bremen, and supported post-machining preparation. The 3D-printed part enabled regenerative cooling with ultra-thin ethanol channels, and the first printed component performed well in testing, surviving a detonation with hardly a scratch. DARE expects the new engine design to burn for 40 seconds, a major improvement over its previous steel-and-graphite engine that lasted no more than 2 seconds.

Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering (DARE)