[1] The institute owed its establishment to Mikhail K. Yangel, one of the originators of rocket engineering in the USSR and Ukraine.

Yangel’s initiative, a new academic division was founded in Dnepropetrovsk: the Sector for Problems in Technical Mechanics, as a part of the Dnepropetrovsk Branch of the Institute of Mechanics of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR)’s Academy of Sciences.

Vsevolod A. Lazaryan, Corresponding Member (from 1972 Academician) of the Ukrainian SSR’s Academy of Sciences, was appointed Head of Division.

In February 1970, the research department of propulsion systems dynamics was established under the leadership of Viktor V. Pylypenko, D.Sc., with the task of augmenting the linear theory and devising a nonlinear theory of pogo self-oscillations of space vehicle structures, developing methods of dynamic characterization of liquid-propellant rocket engines and their components, and studying the dynamics of engine feed systems and transient regimes with consideration for cavitation in the centrifugal pumps with an inducer.

At the institute, a number of laboratories were organized and equipped with up-to-date testing facilities: laboratories of hydrodynamics, plasmadynamics, vacuum and aerodynamic engineering, dynamic testing, strength, high energy, and electroforming; a controlled flow gas-dynamics system; a system to study detonation solid-propellant rocket engines and gas generators; a high-pressure system for rocket nozzle testing, etc.