Documentation
Rocket engine guides
How to design and simulate a rocket engine in Meco, and the propulsion engineering the simulation rests on.
Building and running a model
Start here to build a flow network and run it.
- Quick start: your first rocket engine flow model
Build the smallest working flow network in Meco Rocket Simulator: two nodes, one branch, two control parameters, and a first simulation run.
- The rocket engine simulation model and its component graph
How Meco models a rocket engine as a directed graph of nodes, branches, machinery and control parameters, and how the liquid and gas networks couple.
- Rocket engine component reference
Every component Meco simulates, by category: nodes, branches, machinery, transmission, solids and control parameters, with the model JSON structure.
The component reference
Every component type, its parameters and its model JSON.
- Nodes: rocket engine junctions and boundary conditions
The six node types in a Meco engine model: liquid inlets and outlets, internal junctions, gas nodes and the gas generator, with parameters and examples.
- Branches: rocket engine pipes, ducts and valves
The four branch types that carry flow between nodes, their geometries, fittings and roughness values, with sizing guidance and model JSON.
- Machinery: rocket engine pumps and turbines
Centrifugal pumps, gas turbines and non-dynamic inertia in a Meco engine model, with their parameters, design guidance and performance modelling.
- Transmission: rocket engine shafts and gears
How shafts and gears transfer power between turbines and pumps in a Meco engine model, with sizing, critical speed and connection rules.
- Solids: heat transfer through rocket engine walls
How Meco models conduction through chamber and nozzle walls, Bartz gas-side heat transfer and regenerative cooling on the liquid side.
- Control parameters: throttling a rocket engine in simulation
Constant and time-varying control parameters that drive valves, pump speeds, pressures and mixture ratio through startup, throttling and shutdown.
Rocket propulsion
The engineering behind the model: what a rocket engine has to get right.
- The rocket propulsion textbook: what rocket engine design must consider
The factors a rocket engine design has to answer for, from thrust and specific impulse to cooling, turbopumps, materials, testing and reuse.
- Introduction to rocket engine nozzles
What a rocket engine nozzle does, why its efficiency decides engine performance, and the material, cooling and shape choices behind it.
- Introduction to rocket engine combustion chambers
How a rocket engine combustion chamber turns propellant into thrust, and the design, material and manufacturing questions that follow.
- Rocket engine combustion chamber manufacturing
Forging, brazed tubular walls, electroforming, investment casting, platelet construction and 3D printing, and what each costs the designer.
- Rocket engine books: what to read to learn engine design
The books I actually used to learn liquid rocket engine design, in reading order, with what each one teaches and where it stops, plus the NASA documents that are free.