Space Launch Vehicle Design
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Space Launch Vehicle Design Conceptual design of rocket powered, vertical takeoff, fully expendable and first stage boostback space launch vehicles David Woodward Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering University of Texas at Arlington This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Masters of Science of Aerospace Engineering College of Engineering December 2017 i Declaration I hereby declare that except where specific reference is made to the work of others, this thesis is my own work and contains nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration with others, except as specified in the text and Acknowledgements. Of specific note is the MAE 4350/4351 Senior Design class that ran from January 2017 through August 2017 which was tasked with a similar project. The work presented in my thesis did not borrow from their work except for adapting their method for the estimating of the zero-lift drag coefficient of grid fins, which is referenced appropriately in the text. The methodology used to size first stage boostback launch vehicles and simulate a return-to-launch-site trajectory is of my own design and work. This thesis contains fewer than 51,000 words including appendices, bibliography, footnotes, tables and equations and has fewer than 90 figures. David Woodward January 2018 ii Acknowledgements To Dr. Chudoba, for first meeting with me back in my sophomore year and being a continual presence in my education ever since. The knowledge and skills I have developed from taking all of your classes and working in the AVD are indispensable, and I will be a far better engineer because of it. A big thanks to Mark "Doug" Coley, James Haley, Loveneesh Rana, Thomas McCall, Ian Maynard, and Kiarash Alavi for putting up with all my questions, providing me with all of the resources you already had, and for just being great lab mates and friends. This would have taken much longer without your help. For Priscilla Powell, my sweet angel, for being a constant source of strength and always pushing me to better myself. The support you provided me, particularly at the very end, gave me the strength to push through. For my parents, for being OK with me putting myself through a completely different degree program after you had already helped me through college once. Your support with starting over, all the late nights helping with homework, and your love couldn’t ever be replaced. iii Abstract Engineering design can be broken down into three phases: conceptual design, preliminary design, and detailed design. During the conceptual design phase, several potential configurations are studied towards the identification of the baseline vehicle. Although the least amount of detail is known about the design during the early conceptual design phase, the decisions made during this phase lock in major features effecting life-cycle cost and overall product success. As the next big space race begins, it is critically important to have a readily available tool for launch vehicle designers that is intuitive to use, easy to modify, cost effective, and provides correct results. This thesis details the creation of such a tool for use during the early conceptual design phase by analyzing existing launch vehicle design software and literature in order to adopt a best-practice approach to launch vehicle sizing. In addition to correctly sizing the vehicle calculating the initial parameters, the tool also determines the vehicle's basic geometric information and runs an ascent-to-orbit trajectory simulation to verify the design's validity. The tool is capable of sizing fully expendable space launch vehicles, fully expendable vehicles whose final stage is to be used for both ascent-to-orbit and additional orbital maneuvering after reaching the parking orbit, and vehicles whose first stage performs a self-recovery through the boostback and vertical landing method. iv Table of Contents Declaration ..................................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... ii Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ iii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................. vii List of Tables ................................................................................................................................................ x Chapters Chapter 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Phases of Engineering Design ....................................................................................................... 2 1.1.1 Discipline of Launch Vehicle Design ...................................................................................... 4 1.2 AVD Laboratory ........................................................................................................................... 5 1.3 Research Objective ....................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 2. Literature Survey................................................................................................................... 8 2.1 History of US Launch Vehicles .................................................................................................... 8 2.1.1 History of Boostback Reusability .......................................................................................... 12 2.2 Launch Vehicle Fundamentals .................................................................................................... 16 2.2.1 Staging ................................................................................................................................... 21 2.2.2 Launch Vehicle Mission Profile ............................................................................................ 26 2.2.3 Relating Design Disciplines to Launch Vehicles .................................................................. 29 2.3 Resources .................................................................................................................................... 36 2.3.1 Existing Software .................................................................................................................. 36 2.3.2 Literature ............................................................................................................................... 42 2.3.3 Other Master and PhD Theses ............................................................................................... 49 2.4 Conclusion and Software Specification ...................................................................................... 53 Chapter 3. Launch Vehicle Design ....................................................................................................... 55 3.1 Capabilities, Assumptions, and Limitations ................................................................................ 55 3.2 Program Overview ...................................................................................................................... 56 3.3 The Main Function ...................................................................................................................... 58 3.4 Input Module ............................................................................................................................... 59 v 3.5 ΔV Module .................................................................................................................................. 59 3.5.1 Circular Orbits ....................................................................................................................... 59 3.5.2 Velocity Losses and Benefits ................................................................................................ 61 3.6 Sizing Module ............................................................................................................................. 62 3.6.1 Sizing Process ........................................................................................................................ 66 3.7 Propulsion Module (Given Engine) ............................................................................................ 67 3.8 Propellant Module ....................................................................................................................... 69 3.9 Geometry Module ....................................................................................................................... 70 3.9.1 Propellant Tanks Sizing ......................................................................................................... 72 3.10 Systems Mass Check Module ..................................................................................................... 74 3.11 Trajectory Module....................................................................................................................... 75 3.11.1 Atmosphere and Coefficient of Drag Submodules .............................................................