Solid Rocket Motor Theory
December 2019-July 2020
Overview:
This project involved me learning the compressible fluid mechanics some design and analysis necessary for solid motor design. With this project, I wrote a number of Matlab scripts to aid with design. This project culminated in a 56 page document on the basics of solid propulsion.
Tools Written:
I ended up writing a script to design a minimum length supersonic nozzle using Method of Characteristics and a script for nozzle design using Rao's Method. Outputs of the two scripts shown below. The first image is an output of my MOC script, and the second is an output of the Rao's method script. The latter is the nozzle contour I used for my Ethalox engine design.
Lastly, I wrote a combustion model. It takes in grain geometry of a solid motor as well as a few chemical parameters as an input, and outputs a pressure vs time curve, thrust vs time curve, as well as the total impulse of the motor. The document deriving the math model for the combustion model is linked below as well as a test output of the program.
And finally, I have my 56 page propulsion guide linked below. It is missing a section on combustion analysis, but most of the content I will put there is in the PDF I linked above that goes over the math behind the combustion model.