PURPL [Purdue Undergraduate Rocket Propulsion Lab]

?? Join PURPL for Our Spring 2025 Callout Meeting! ?? We’re excited to kick off the semester with new opportunities and a big announcement! Come learn about the Purdue Undergraduate Rocket Propulsion Lab and how you can be part of an amazing team working on cutting-edge projects. ?? ?? Date: Wednesday, January 22, 2025 ?? Time: 7:00 PM ?? Location: PHYS 114 ?? What to expect: Insights into our current and upcoming projects The unveiling of a new team initiative Opportunities to get involved in hands-on rocket science! Whether you're passionate about space exploration, eager to apply your STEM skills, or looking to join a supportive and innovative community, PURPL has a place for you. Let’s work together to achieve incredible things! ?? #PURPL #Purdue #RocketScience #SpaceExploration #STEMLeadership #Innovation #Teamwork #LaunchYourFuture ?? 4o

This semester, our Turbopump and Turbojet teams leveraged CFturbo to accelerate the design process of their turbomachinery components. The Turbopump team successfully designed inducers and impellers for their liquid oxygen and Jet-A pumps, using CFturbo's precision to optimize performance. They also explored preliminary waterflow pump-casing designs with the software's volute geometry tools. The Turbojet team utilized CFturbo to generate complex geometries for their centrifugal compressor and axial turbine, paving the way for advanced turbojet design. The intuitive workflows and powerful modeling tools in CFturbo enabled us to go from design points to complex 3D designs quickly and efficiently. We’re incredibly grateful for CFturbo's support and can’t wait to start manufacturing next semester! Stay tuned for more updates as we bring these designs to life.

Don't worry, you aren't seeing double ?? - PURPL had two teams deliver end-of-semester design presentations last week! Our Electric Propulsion team also passed Preliminary Design Review on their krypton-fueled hall-effect thruster last Thursday, putting them on track to be the first undergraduates to build this type of engine at Purdue University! ? Keep your eyes out as the team works to finalize and test their design in the spring semester! ??

This past Thursday our Turbopump project team successfully completed a Preliminary Design Review for their 5,000lbf gas generator-cycle turbopump and engine! ?? This is the culmination of the team's hard work this semester, marking a big stepping stone towards the goal of designing, building, and testing turbomachinery as a collegiate team at Purdue University! ?? ?? Thank you to all of the professors, industry mentors, and graduate faculty who stopped by and gave their feedback on the design!

Last week, PURPL's Turbojet team completed their preliminary design review for their 50lbf engine! They were able to show off their hard work from this semester and received valuable feedback from Purdue and industry mentors which they will use to iterate towards an innovative and efficient final design. Stay tuned for more updates as the team works on making their design reality!

Our turbojet team got the chance to take apart and investigate the components of an rc turbojet that is used by Professor Qiao’s research group. This experience got the team familiar with component integration and general design. All of the observations will be used to influence the design of their own 50 lbf turbojet.

This past Sunday, PURPL's Electric Propulsion team got the chance to visit Dr. Shashurin's lab, the Purdue EPPL (Electric Propulsion and Plasma Laboratory)! Here they operated the lab's SPT-100 hall thruster before building cathode ray tubes to learn about principles of electric propulsion. These were the first steps in their mission to design, build, and test Purdue's first undergraduate hall effect thruster!

PURPL is going public! We'll be having our first-ever callout next Monday 8/26 at 6pm in PHYS 114 where we'll be giving an introduction to the club, our team, and our projects. If you're a Purdue student interested in airbreathing or rocket propulsion, this is a great opportunity to get in on the ground level of some advanced engine design work, from gas-generator turbopumps to turbojets to deep-space electric propulsion! More information can be found on our website and discord linked on our profile!