385. Some Weight Aspects of a Missile Optimization Computer Program
$20.00
SAWE Members get a $200 store credit each year.*
*Store credit coupon available at checkout, click the button in your shopping cart to apply the coupon.
Not applicable to SAWE textbooks and current conference technical papers.
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. The use of high-speed digital computers has become commonplace in the aerospace industry in recent years. One use is to facilitate the preliminary design of missiles through parametric analysis of various design characteristics. The sophistication of a particular program may be judged, from the weight engineer’s point of view, by the approach taken to account for the missile’s weight. This may vary from the use of a fixed mass fraction to the use of extremely detailed structural and weight analysis methods.
This paper describes Program Omega, a solid propellant ballistic missile design and optimization method that takes advantage both of the capabilities of the computer and the judgment of the engineers in each of the many disciplines involved. Much of the program is devoted to the definition of propulsion and structural parameters to ensure the accuracy of the weight analysis. In order to illustrate the extent of the work undertaken in this approach, a rather brief outline of each program subroutine is presented along with a description of how these subroutines are integrated. Major emphasis is placed on the weight subroutine and other facets of the program where weight engineering is involved.
