383. Wire Weight Determination for Missiles

Paper

Abstract

This paper was presented at the Twenty-second Annual National Conference of the Society of Aeronautical Weight Engineers at St. Louis, Missouri, April 29-May 1, 1963. On any missile program one of the hardest items to try to determine at either an advanced design or hardware states is the weight of wire. The purpose of this report is to present a method that can be used to approximate wire weight for a missile that is yet in the engineer’s mind and to determine accurate weights for wire on missiles that are in a hardware state. This causes two distinct and different situations to be covered.
First, the Advanced Design problem. Missile wiring can be separated into three general categories:
1) Instrumentation
2) Guidance and Flight Control
3) Power
A base must be set. Before weight can be predicted for a theoretical missile, a weight must be determined for an existing missile. This existing weight is then turned into useful information by finding a common key to all missiles.
What is a common key? First, look at Instrumentation. Overall, the amount of wire present depends solely on the number of measurements taken. Guidance and Flight Control depends solely on the number of measurements taken. Guidance and Flight Control depends upon the number of functions to be performed. Power depends on the loads necessary for flight.
By breaking out Instrumentation pounds per measurement, Guidance and Flight Control pounds per function and Power pounds per amp-hr, the weight of an equivalent system can be determined. Factors then can be applied to take care of differences in length, diameter, configuration, etc. from the base missile.