Etude de la Balistique Interieure des Fusées a Poudre [Interior Ballistics of Powder Charges]

The development of very large size solid rocket engines cannot be accomplished, as in the case of small rocket engines, by empirical methods requiring a great number of full-scale firings. It is therefore necessary to predict rocket operation from data obtained on charges of different size and geometry.

This paper presents a mathematical method for determining analytically the rocket engine thrust and chamber pressure development curves from the charge and engine geometry, the heat of explosion the kinetics characteristics and any other parameters affecting engine operation. It is shown that it is possible to compute empirical values for burning rate and erosion effects from experimental firings.

Following a brief survey of the fundamentals of this method, the procedure is illustrated by four representative examples.