Rapid prediction of star propellant grain regression using CAD software

This paper describes a fast technique for simulating the evolution of the burning surface of a star shaped propellant grain. This burn analysis is fully automated using the features of commercial computer-aided-design (CAD) program. Propellant surface burnback is simulated using feature offset capability. Analytical or computational expressions are not used for propellant grain regression, resulting in visual and straight forward simpler solution. Application Programming Interface (API) of CAD software is fully tapped to automate and allows the user to visualize and readily obtain plots of burn area, burn volume, moments of inertia, motion of center of gravity and other geometric data as a function of burning distance. This enables an efficient geometric tool to be used for describing the propellant grain geometry for grain design, internal flow and structural analysis.