Joseph Pluscauskis
Program Manager
Education
B.E., Mechanical Engineering, Villanova University, 1998
M.E., Mechanical Engineering, Villanova University, 1999
Fundamentals of Solid Propellant Rocket Motors, University of Tennessee Space Institute
Ph.D. Student, Villanova University, Current
Experience
Mr. Pluscauskis has eleven years experience in composite materials, refractory metals, and ceramics research and development. At Materials Research & Design he is active in several programs related to modeling, design, and analysis of high temperature composites, heat shields, refractory metals, and ceramics for various aerospace applications. He specializes in high temperature non-eroding rocket nozzle designs.
Mr. Pluscauskis is currently designing HfO2/Iridium/Rhenium combustion chambers for a NASA 3000 - 5000 lb LOX/CH4 Lunar Ascent engine under a NASA Phase II SBIR. The designs are based on a balance of limiting the maximum operating temperatures as well as the stresses/strains that develop within the materials during operation. The radiation cooled combustion chamber must survive repeated firings with stagnation temperatures and pressures of 5420°F and 350 psi, respectively.
Mr. Pluscauskis had been an active member in the Integrated High Payoff Rocket Propulsion Technology (IHPRPT) Advanced Nozzles Materials team for over seven years. He has gained extensive experience modeling solid propellant rocket motors and specifically the materials that are exposed to extreme thermal environments. The modeling effort typically includes temperature dependent material properties, plasticity, and contact. The analysis models are employed to compute transient temperatures, stresses, and strains. During this program, we have designed non-eroding metallic throat inserts made with pure tungsten, tungsten-rhenium alloys, and tungsten-rhenium alloys doped with hafnium carbide. These materials proved to be successful through static motor firings which have been predicted through analytical results. Some of the more severe metallic throat firings have survived 9.0 - 20.0 second burn times with aluminized propellants that lead to stagnation temperatures in the range of 5970 - 6200°F and stagnation pressures ranging from 1550–2400 psi where throat diameters range from 1.0 - 2.63 inches. These conditions push the throat insert temperatures to 5600 - 5820°F.
Mr. Pluscauskis is also an active team member of the IHPRPT Ceramic Boost Nozzle program. He has been involved in this program throughout its duration. This program focuses on developing ultra-high temperature ceramic materials to survive in more severe thermal-structural and thermal-chemical rocket nozzle environments. To date, he has designed the first ten rocket nozzles that were successfully tested in the program. Eight of which have survived in a 9 second burn time subjected to an aluminized propellant with a stagnation temperature and pressure of 6200°F and 800 psi, respectively. Two more recent tests survived for 2.2 seconds subjected to stagnation pressures of 1300 psi. These motors employed a tantalum carbide throat material with an external rhenium or tantalum tungsten alloy metallic jacket. The fabrication processes included plasma spraying and hot isostatic processing (HIP). It was found that these fabrication processes favorably preload the throat inserts to help overcome the thermal shock event early into the burn.
Mr. Pluscauskis has worked on the Strategic Propulsion and Application Program (SPAP) and Defense Technical Objective (DTO) government working groups with Lockheed Martin, ATK-Launch Systems (Utah), and NAWC-China Lake assisting with the development of ceramic (TaC) lined tantalum (Ta) - 10 tungsten (W) solid rocket nozzles for the third stage D5 submarine launched missile. There have been three successful subscale ground tests performed that all survived 20 seconds of burn at about 900 psi (average). Additionally, there has been a long-burn subscale test to confirm/verify the creep performance of these materials. Finally, the full-scale throat insert behaved per design surviving burn for about 40 seconds at an average pressure of about 800 psi yielding 30,000 lb of thrust.
Mr. Pluscauskis has contributed to several additional designs that have been successfully ground tested at ATK-Utah, AFRL-Edwards, NAWC-China Lake, ABL-West Virginia, and ATK-Elkton.