Instantaneous Impact Point Guidance with Coast Arcs for Solid Rockets

This paper proposed an analytical iterative guidance method with the desired instantaneous impact point constraint for solid rockets in “burn-coast-burn” trajectory mode. Solid rocket motors expect to remove the thrust termination mechanism to increase the structural strength and launch reliability, which induce new difficulties and challenges to the guidance problems. In terms of the “Hohmann transfer” principle, a pointing algorithm is deduced in depth to establish the theoretical relations among the ignition time, the required velocity vector, and the orbital element constraints and provides the analytical expression of the ignition time. Then, an analytic solution of the required velocity vector is derived based on orthogonal and nonorthogonal velocity vectors, and a complete guidance logic is used to solve the target orbit elements satisfying the desired instantaneous impact point. Finally, the application of the developed theoretical algorithm in this paper is conducted using a two-stage solid rocket. The proposed guidance method is verified by Monte Carlo simulations, and the testing results demonstrate the adaptability, strong robustness, and excellent performance for different desired impact point missions.

Numerical Study on Similarity of Plume’s Infrared Radiation from Reduced Scaling Solid Rocket

Similarity of plume radiation between reduced scaling solid rocket models and full scale ones in ground conditions has been taken for investigation. Flow and radiation of plume from solid rockets with scaling ratio from 0.1 to 1 have been computed. The radiative transfer equation (RTE) is solved by the finite volume method (FVM) in infrared band 2~6 μm. The spectral characteristics of plume gases have been calculated with the weighted-sum-of-gray-gas (WSGG) model, and those of the Al2O3particles have been solved by the Mie scattering model. Our research shows that, with the decreasing scaling ratio of the rocket engine, the radiation intensity of the plume decreases with 1.5~2.5 power of the scaling ratio. The infrared radiation of the plume gases shows a strong spectral dependency, while that of the Al2O3particles shows grey property. Spectral radiation intensity of the high temperature core of the solid rocket plume increases greatly in the peak absorption spectrum of plume gases. Al2O3particle is the major radiation composition in the rocket plume, whose scattering coefficient is much larger than its absorption coefficient. There is good similarity between spectral variations of plumes from different scaling solid rockets. The directional plume radiation rises with the increasing azimuth angle.