Development of a hover test bed

Abstract

This research examines the development, validation, and verification of a hover test bed at the Missile Defense Agency's National Hover Test Facility located at the Air Force Research Laboratory on Edwards Air Force Base, California. This work's scope includes the development of a test bed for exoatmospheric kill vehicle testing in an integrated hover test arrangement. The approach involved reactivation of the facility, design of a risk reduction methodology, and vehicle performance verification. Details from a combustion stability issue on the divert engine is investigated, and changing the diameter of the injector reduced a first tangential combustion chamber mode combustion instability from 17.8% to 0.8%.