ENH: Support for solid motor designs without glued/bonded grains #340
Labels
Enhancement
New feature or request, including adjustments in current codes
Motors
Every propulsion related issue or PR
Milestone
Description:
RocketPy currently assumes that the solid rocket motor design follows the BATES grain configuration, where the ends of each individual grain burn simultaneously as the core burns radially. In this configuration, assuming the grains positions remain fixed, the center of mass of the propellant does not change since the center of mass of each grain remains fixed.
However, there are many solid rocket motor designs that do not glue or bond the grains to the outer liner or casing. During flight, these unglued grains are pushed and shift their position towards the nozzle due to inertial forces, causing the center of mass position of the total propellant to change. This behavior can affect the stability of the rocket and is not currently contemplated in RocketPy.
To address this issue, I suggest adding an option inside the SolidMotor class for motor designs without glued/bonded grains. This would involve modeling the movement of unglued grains during flight and updating the center of mass position of the total propellant accordingly.
Additional context
Some research on the matter led me to:
Overall, I believe that this is an important new feature to be considered. It will enable RocketPy to provide more accurate simulations for a seemingly wide range of rockets that utilize freestanding grain motor designs.
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