93-135
Stability Of Spinning Rockets With Internal Mass Motion
D. L Mingori*, D. M. Halsmer** and Y. Yam***
Abstract
One hypothesis for explaining the coning instabilities observed in spinning solid fuel rockets attributes the source of the instability to the accumulation of slag near the exit of the rocket casing. Previously this hypothesis was explored using a particle model with elastic restoring forces to represent slag motion. Damping was not modeled in order to emphasize that the instabilities detected were not the result of energy dissipation. The present paper examines how these results are modified when dissipative forces are added to the model. The results show that regions which were unstable in the absence of dissipative forces remain so when dissipative forces are added. In areas where the undamped stability results were inconclusive, some regions become unstable and some become asymptotically stable. Thus the region of instability in the presence of dissipative forces is larger than that found previously for purely elastic forces.
*Please address all correspondence to: Professor D. L. Mingori, 38-137 Engineering IV, University of California, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90024-1597
**Oral Roberts University. Tulsa, Oklahoma 74171
***Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT.