Nose Cone Parametric Studies for Optimal Design of 300 mm-Class Ballistic Rocket

Maximum range is one of the main objectives in ballistic rocket design since it could secure mission success. The objective of this research is to find the optimal design of a 300 mm-class rocket to achieve maximum range. The rocket design constraints are 5.6 <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$m$</tex> of total length, 306 mm of diameter, and 180 kg of payload. The design parameters are the nose cone shape and fineness ratio. There are 42 rocket configurations investigated which consisted of a combination of conic, power 0.5, power 0.75, tangent ogive, LD Haack, and LV Haack nose cones and fineness ratio of 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, and 5. Aerodynamic coefficients were obtained using a semi-empirical method, while mass and thrust were calculated analytically. 3-DOF trajectory simulations were then carried out to calculate rocket performance. The result shows that a rocket configuration with LV Haack nose cone and fineness ratio of 3.5, gives a maximum range of 89.36 km, obtained at a launch elevation angle of 65°.