Solid rocket motor design employing an efficient performance matching approach

Abstract

Solid rocket motor design matching the thrust requirement of the overall vehicle has become an exigent task. In the present research, an efficient performance matching optimization approach is proposed and applied to the solid rocket motor design. To obtain reliable solid rocket motor designs, refined performance evaluation is accomplished successfully based on the coupling of the level set grain burnback analysis and one-dimensional ballistic simulation by the time-stepping algorithm. Due to the heavy computing burden of the coupled performance solver, a novel progressive matching optimization approach is proposed. This approach depends on partial but not full-burn thrust profile to eliminate inferior candidates, predict superior candidates, advance the simulation and drive the candidates converging to the specified performance. Validation of the proposed solid rocket motor design approach is carried out by two test cases possessing different thrust requirements, and results indicate that the proposed approach is practical and efficient.