Estimating the Pitch Damping Coefficient of A Fin Stabilized Rocket using Particle Based CFD

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is common used to analyze rocket aerodynamics but their application on pitch damping estimation is still limited. This limitation is partly due to the fact that most CFD tools available on market employ a conventional Eulerian mesh-based method. To simulate a transient pitching motion of a rocket, it requires dynamic mesh or other special techniques. With recent introduction of Lagrangian particle-based CFD tools, it has become more convenience to apply CFD to simulate the transient pitching motion of a rocket. This paper investigates the application of a Lagrangian particle-based CFD to estimate the pitch damping coefficient of a fin stabilized rocket (Hydra 70 MK66/M151). The pitching response from 10 degree initial angle of attack was simulated for Mach 0.6 to 2.48 using XFlow, which is a particle-based CFD software. Simulation results were compared to the available wind tunnel test data to evaluate the accuracy. The results showed a good correlation between the simulation results and test data at high Mach number