70 YEARS OF SOVIET RAMJETS - Soviet Works on Ramjets from 1929 till Now
- Paper ID
IAF-97-IAA.2.3.03
- author
- company
Air & Cosmos
- country
France
- year
1997
- abstract
The theory behind the ramjet developed by René Lorin (1877- 1933) in 1913 was brought to the USSR in 1929 by B.S.Stetchkine (1891-1969), a TsAGI engineer. From 1930 to 1933, Stetchkine was imprisoned, and hence, it was You.A.Pobedonostsev (1) who began work on development, with I.A.Merkoulov (2),. at the 3rd GIRD brigade in 1931. It was him who inaugurated the IU-1 test bench on March 26, 1933 and launched on April 15, using a 76 mm shell (object 08), the first aragine which had a thrust of 18 kg. Later, during three series of in-flight, tests held in 1933, 1934 and 1935, he tested six different variants of the engine. These experiments were continued in 1935/40 by Merkoulov who was at that time in the propulsion section of Oso AviaKhim. He developed a ramjet with 40 kg of thrust that burned a mix of aluminium and magnesium. The ramjet has been used on the second stage of the VR-3 rocket whose maiden flight was on March 5, 1939. Powered by a first solid propellant stage, the 8.3 kg ramjet flew for 5 second, reaching a speed of 224 m/s and an altitude of 1.8 km. Sixteen rockets of this type were built.