Simulation of a sounding rocket flight's dynamic

Abstract

Sounding rockets are a widely used test bench in the aerospace field that allow testing a huge quantity of products, parts ed experiments. However, they are often expensive and require a long development cycle before launch. In this scenario, the Nimbus project team has developed a sounding rocket with the main purpose of engineering a reusable, cost-effective test bench, which is scalable to carry heavier payloads. Within the Nimbus team it was requested to develop a trajectory prediction software to determin the maximum altitude with the relative uncertainty, the landing area, the impact ellipse in case of a emergency and how construction errors and external forces influence on the trajectory. In this work are presented the theoretical approach of the uncertainty calculation of altitude and range and a comparison with the data measured during flight tests.