Following a review of circumstances that led to widespread property damage and loss of life, the review board has recommended testing be conducted to understand better the parameters of safe engine operation, failure states, and possible recovery procedures. While test parameters might be well understood by many engineers the board has concluded that in the interests of productivity loss prevention transparent testing and peer review should be undertaken and encouraged. Therefore it has authorized the following test and pending review of the results will make further recommendations. This test and any subsequent testing will be performed on a replica engine built specifically for testing.
NT Super Matter Engine Test One - Baseline
Purpose
Explore relationships between key metrics during controlled ignition of the Cyberiad SM Engine using optimized settings.
Experimental Setup
Vents to 0 Internal. Extended Siphon all gasses. All pumps and filters at full power (4500kPa). Access doors to the core were bolted shut to prevent core contamination (gases, test engineers).
Coolant : C02
Methodology
Slowly introduce coolant gas into reaction chamber and measure resting state (after allowing gasses and reaction to settle into a meta-stable state until ignition occurs. Add additional coolant after ignition and continue to measure.
Additionally attempt a coolant flush and replacement with N2 in an attempt to complete a controlled near shut-down of the engine.
Key Findings
Slowly introducing coolant to maintain input volumes between 200 and 450 mol of CO2 after a short spike in activity began to have an expected result – the engine cooled and relative EER went down as pressure gently rose. This linear relationship stopped abruptly somewhere between 450 and 590 mol but resumed between 590 and 650 mol.
Ignition caused core temperature to jump from 33K to 72K and pressure to jump from 12 kPa to 34 kPa.
Testing suggests a minimum safe operating EER ranges with CO2 coolant is between 3350 and 3500 MeV with a temperate near 72K at a pressure near 35-40 kPa. Lower and the engine will fail to be sufficiently agitated. The consequences and benefits of using additional coolant must be explored in future tests.
Coolant flush with input volume of 244 mol N2 allowed the engine to enter a relatively dormant state with an EER resting at 90 MeV and a core temperature of 25K at 5 kPa. This effectively scrams the engine. While safe, it should not be considered stable. Reducing N2 coolant levels will lead to temperature driven delamination as residual plasma reacts with oxygen in a run away chain reaction. During testing core temperatures exceeded 10000K. Full delamination happened in a matter of minutes. [NT Office of Risk Management concludes the value of the data collected in fail state testing the SM engine is worth the cost in property and other company resources]
Full test time was one hour.
Proposed Tests
Explore at what N2 coolant volume plasma oxygen reactions overtake the ability of the coolant to keep the core temperature stable.
Attempt restart of scramed engine reintroducing C02 while removing N2.
Explore power curve of engine between operating EER voltages between 3500 and 5000 MeV
