ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,276,239, issued on April 15.
"Transverse-jet combustor for a rocket engine" was invented by Robert Edward Breidenthal Jr. (Seattle).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "This invention exploits the fundamental physics of turbulent mixing to improve bi-propellant chemical rocket engines. Instead of the many axial reactant injectors in conventional engines, only two transverse injectors are required to generate a pair of large, counter-rotating, streamwise vortices and to mix the reactants for the case of a circular combustion chamber. The vortex pair controls the rate of mixing and the rate of heat release, insensitive to pressure waves and relati...