Solid Rocket Motors (SRMs) are employed in many space launch applications from the booster rockets onthe now retired Space Shuttle to the new European launch vehicle Vega. Preliminary design of thesecomplex three dimensional SRMs, given certain requirements and limitations can be considered as anoptimization process where a best geometrical solution is sought resulting in a desirable thrust profile. Inthis project, a derivate free direct search package titled NOMAD is employed together with the internallydeveloped numerical burnback analysis tool SRP-GEO and ballistic solver SRP. An analytical model for theburnback analysis tool is also developed to take advantage of the support for surrogate functions withinNOMAD. Due to the local nature of the optimizer, the results for complex geometries are shown toconverge toward configurations different from the globally optimal geometries. Yet in most instances, theresulting calculated thrust profiles are shown to correlate well with the desired counterpart. This highlightsthe importance of carefully chosen initial values and boundaries while also emphasize the many possiblesolutions to a single problem.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-92562 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Johannsson, Magni |
| Publisher | KTH, Rymd- och plasmafysik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | EES Examensarbete / Master Thesis ; XR-EE-SPP 2012:002 |
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