Our Ph.D. Student Mehmet Kahraman Received Best Paper Award

ITU Graduate School Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering Ph.D. Program student Mehmet Kahraman’s paper received best paper award from American Institute of Aeronautics and Aerospace (AIAA).

ITU Graduate School Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering Ph.D. Program student Mehmet Kahraman’s paper presentation on hybrid rocket engines was awarded by American Institute of Aeronautics and Aerospace (AIAA), one of the world’s leading aerospace societies. ITU Aeronautical Engineering faculty member Prof. Dr. İbrahim Özkol and Koç University faculty member Assoc. Prof. Dr. Arif Karabeyoğlu also contributed to the paper.

Mehmet Kahraman gave the following information about his study that received best paper award: “Hybrid rocket engine technologies contain many areas open to development compared to solid and liquid fuel systems, which have been widely used since the 1950s and reached technological saturation in the 1970s. Hybrid rocket engine technologies provide the opportunity to develop safer and more economical systems compared to other rocket systems due to their structure. Many newly established companies around the world are conducting studies to develop this technology. In this study, an original internal ballistic design has been proposed to improve the 'low fuel burning rate', which is the major drawback in hybrid rocket engines (and the reason for them to fall behind in the 1950s when solid-liquid rocket systems developed and afterwards). With this study, an increase in fuel burning rate about 16 times compared to classical hybrid rocket engines and about 4 times compared to advanced hybrid rocket engines has been achieved. The study has shown the proposed internal engine ballistic to be not only laboratory scale but also scalable for real applications. With the high fuel burning rate obtained, hybrid rocket engines can be used as a strong alternative in many different applications.”

We congratulate our 2020 AIAA Hybrid Rockets Best Student Paper Award winner student and wish him continued success.

About Mehmet Kahraman

Mehmet Kahraman graduated from ITU Metallurgical and Materials Engineering (2011) and Aeronautics Engineering (2012) departments. He received his master’s degree from ITU Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering (2015) Graduate Program and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in the same program. He has been in professional business life since 2012. He works on the development processes of propulsion systems and subsystems in the field of defense industry and aerospace. He is currently the R&D Director of DeltaV Space Technologies.