Sometime after the artillery missile rocket motor program was ended, a California prime contractor came to the Virginia rocket company to give a presentation about their underwater missile system (based on using the Terrain Avoidance Control and Navigation - TACAN system). At that particular time all the major prime contractors were promoting their own versions of that missile system and had solicited a proposal for a rocket booster from the Virginia rocket company. Because one of the requirements of all of the designs was thrust vector ability, the Virginia rocket company declined to bid because they did not have that design capability. Prior to the visit of the California company to the Virginia rocket company, all the prime contractors had already teamed up with a rocket motor manufacturer and there were no more rocket motor manufacturers available to the California company. The California company appeared to be locked out of the competition. At that particular time, TRW (Thompson-Ramo-Wooldridge), of Los Angeles, California, was promoting a jet tabs kind of nozzle, for thrust vectoring. TRW had approached the California company with their nozzle design but they had no solid propellant rocket motor design or manufacturing capability. TRW came to the Virginia rocket company, along with the California company. They also gave a presentation, regarding their nozzle capability. For the California company/TRW presentation, the Virginia rocket company had gathered representatives (almost everyone) from management, accounting, engineering and manufacturing. After the formal part of the presentations was finished, the California companys project manager told us that the rest of the industry was six months ahead of them. To catch up, they needed a design and heavy wall motor test within 30 days. All the Virginia rocket companys representatives in that room said, with one astonished voice, it cannot be done. After considerable discussion about liability and best effort, the Virginia rocket company agreed to a best effort program on the basis of no liability if the end objective could not be achieved. The Virginia rocket company was authorized to proceed immediately. At this point, the meeting broke into specialty splinter groups, to iron out detailed requirements. A Norwegian engineer led the engineering splinter group for the California company.
As soon as the engineering splinter group was assembled, the head of the Virginia rocket companys Structures - Heat Transfer - Nozzle Design Group took charge of the meeting. The first question he asked the Norwegian was where a copy of the design requirements was. The Norwegian responded that no such requirements had been generated. The Norwegian said General Dynamics had a group of engineers working that problem but did not anticipate a set of requirements for at least six months. The Norwegian said he had a few limited facts but the rest of the requirements would have to be determined as time went along. The Norwegian gave the Virginia rocket team the length and diameter of the physical envelope within which the rocket motor had to fit. He told us the missile would be ejected from a submarine torpedo tube, by compressed air, at depths ranging from 600 feet to 200 feet. The nozzle exit plane pressure at ignition had to be at least 600 psia (at 600 ft depth) for the jet tabs to work (TRW supplied information). The rocket motor had to produce at least 3900 pounds of thrust when the missile broached the sea surface (for stability), at about four seconds. About eight seconds additional thrusting, at 3900 pounds was needed, to accomplish wing deployment and turbojet ignition. The Norwegian said other information would be supplied as it was obtained. The sketch of Figure 1 shows, schematically, the required thrust trace.
Figure 1 Under Water Estimated Pressure History Requirement
Taking these things into account, the author designed the ignition and initial grain burning to produce a momentary (less than one second) pressure spike at ignition that went up to approximately 1400 psia then dropped down to 1000 psia before beginning a rise to 2000 psia at four seconds. At four seconds, the motor produced over 4000 pounds of thrust until burn-out at twelve seconds. The grain configuration was never changed after the first demonstration motor test. A project engineer, who had attended all the meetings, all or in part, was named Program Manager and another project engineer was named Project Engineer, a technician became the Expediter, a design engineer was named the Design Engineer, a thermal analysis engineer became the Heat Transfer Engineer, a structures engineer became the Structures Engineer and the author became 2
the grain designer-internal ballistician - igniter sizer. Actually, the design
engineer was the official igniter design engineer but the author defined the ignition charge type and weight, the number and size of the igniter nozzles (holes) and the length and diameter of the igniter housing.
Figure 2 Sketch of the Tomahawk Grain Design
Within two days, the author had a grain design and the igniter sized to the degree that drawings could begin being created. Realizing the lead time necessary to get the motor case, he designed a grain that could be modified without changing case hardware or propellant casting and curing procedures. The sketch of Figure 2 shows, schematically, the proposed grain configuration. On the third day, he had completed preliminary performance predictions, showing that the motor met all the requirements given to the team by the Norwegian. Structures and heat transfer had finished their calculations also by the third day. By the end of the week, preliminary drawings were given to a case supplier. By the end of the second week, the Virginia rocket company had the first of four heavy wall cases, along with the steel igniter bodies. By the end of the third week, the first case was prepared for propellant casting. During the fourth week, the propellant was cast and cured and the first motor prepared for testing on the 29th day. The first motor was successfully fired on the test stand on the 30th day. That goal of a demonstration motor firing within 30 days was achieved, but to achieve that goal, the underwater rocket motor team worked around the clock on some days and put in 16 to 20 hours per day on the others. The underwater rocket motor team worked seven days a week until the motor was fired. Although the rocket motor test was a complete success, it was not a flawless success. All components of the rocket motor behaved almost exactly as predicted except the igniter. The igniter lit the motor precisely as it was supposed to do, however, the 2.5 inch diameter igniter steel shell burned in two ten seconds into the firing and went through the 1.5 inch diameter nozzle throat, cracking it. Due to the crack, the nozzle throat opened up about 25 percent
additional flow area, causing the pressure to drop to about half its predicted value. Although at a lower pressure, the motor continued to operate until total grain burn-out. Post firing analyses and reconstruction showed that the rocket motor would have functioned almost exactly as predicted had the igniter and, consequently, the nozzle not failed. The igniter failure was a consequence of a design error by the design engineer. The design flaw could have been easily corrected and no future failure anticipated. However, in typical prime contractor fashion, the California company flooded the Virginia rocket company with their igniter experts the next day and those igniter experts spent two weeks creating a design-by-committee monstrosity. The design engineer, the draftsman and the author had spent no more than four hours on the original igniter design, up to that point, and could have corrected the error in less than one hour. (Note: The camel is said to be a horse designed by committee.) However, in spite of its Rube Goldberg design, the igniter performed flawlessly in all subsequent tests. The nozzle also performed flawlessly in all subsequent tests.
Post Firing Analyses
None of the members of the initial under water rocket motor design team understood the critical nature of the missile system to the national defense. The failure or miss-performance of a single motor could have had disastrous consequences in terms of national defense, during the Cold War. The initial design team members were simply doing their job with a great deal of pride, competence and dedication to profession and company. The mission criticality slowly became known after the California company won the development and subsequent production contracts. The US Navy demanded that a full scale lot acceptance test (LAT) motor be taken from every batch of motors manufactured and statically fired. Since only four motors could be cast from a mixer of propellant that meant that one motor out of every four would be fired on a test stand and a post firing analysis of the test data conducted. Such a demand put great emphases on post firing analyses and led to the refinement of the Static Firing Analysis computer program (SFA) well beyond industry standards. Additional demands for reliability and accuracy led to the development and refinement of a program to obtain propellant burn rate accuracies well in advance of industry acceptable limits. Sub scale motor design and refinement was also necessary, as will be discussed later. Analysis of sub scale motor firing data reached new levels as the SFA computer program was further refined, as will also be discussed later.
Sub Scale Motors
As the underwater rocket motor program proceeded, the message become clear that the Virginia rocket company was expected to produce a solid propellant rocket motor of unprecedented accuracy, reproducibility and reliability. Drawing tolerances, tooling tolerances and highly reproducible procedures and inspections took care of most of these requirements. However, the variability of propellant characteristics was a subject so rarely addressed that it was simply assumed that either no variability existed or that, if it did, tools to quantify it didnt exist. Throughout the industry, a trivial effort to utilize sub scale motors yielded 98 percent accuracy (two percent variability). The reproducibility of full scale motors clearly showed the problem to be one of data acquisition and not one of actual variability. Through considerable research and testing, the Virginia rocket company determined that data from motors smaller than the, Army designated, 6C4-11.4 (cylindrical grain with a six inch outside diameter, four inch inside diameter and 11.4 inch length) was inadequate for the underwater rocket motor needs. The Virginia rocket company also determined that a lesser number of motors than six were statistically insignificant. With these facts in mind, a test firing matrix of six 6C4-11.4 motors was developed and adopted. To ensure adequate motors for the test matrix, eight sub scale motors were cast from every batch of propellant from which four full scale motors were cast. Six sub scale motors were statically fired and two were held in reserve. Every sub scale motor firing was analyzed for 17 different average parameters by a special version of the SFA computer program. All motor firing data was entered into a data base and the analysis results from each motor and from each batch of motors was compared to the data base. As soon as a significant data base was established, any anomaly was quickly flagged and the cause of the anomaly investigated. It soon became apparent that burn rate variability was within one quarter of a percent (one standard deviation) instead of the one to two percent normally reported.
The Under Water Rocket Motor LAT Flaw
The reliability urgency pushed the Virginia rocket company to subject every full scale motor static firing to the same in depth scrutiny, of the SFA computer program, as the sub scale motor firings. Not only were the 17 mean data parameters saved to a data base but 17 graphical histories were stored in the data base and normalized. Each of the 17 mean data values from a motor firing were graphed, with respect to the data base, for a quick check of a motors relative performance. Each of the 17 graphical histories, from a motor firing, 5
was also graphed, along with the normalized histories from the data base. Any anomaly was quickly identified. On one occasion, an anomaly was detected in a LAT motor firing. An in depth analysis of the motor firing data revealed that a small area of the grain aft end inhibitor had failed. The magnitude of the unbond was so small (about ten square inches) that the anomaly would normally not have been detected. The flaw was only detected by the detailed analysis using the SFA computer program. Although that flaw was not sufficient to cause a motor and/or mission failure, the flaw portended a potentially disastrous event. As soon as the details of the flaw were clearly understood, the Program Manager was made aware of the flaw. He was so astonished; he denied it was possible to have such a flaw. He assured the author that there was an inspection step that would preclude such a flaw. Nevertheless, he called the quality control person in charge to verify that his belief was true. He discovered that his belief was not true. There was no inspection step to verify that the grain aft end inhibitor was properly bonded to the grain. The step was immediately inserted into the procedure and all the existing motors, wherever they were located, were checked to verify proper bonding. The SFA computer program prevented a potential disaster.
SFA Program Status
At this point in the development of the Static Firing Analysis program it was quite significantly beyond anything presented at symposia or written about in technical papers or technical journals. The Virginia rocket company management considered the existence of the SFA program to be company proprietary and would not allow any technical papers to be presented concerning it or its capabilities. Because the author was interested to see any other work of a similar type, he scoured technical journals and technical papers to see if anyone had developed any similar computer analysis capability. He found none then and he has not found any since, except those stolen from the Virginia rocket company by members of the staff that left the company and took copies of it with them. A detailed explanation, of how the SFA program works to solve problems, is presented elsewhere on this web site. Note: On the referenced web site SFA is called ROMANS-I.
The Big Meeting
One day, the program manager came to the author and said he was attending a meeting in the auditorium at the main headquarters. He asked the author to attend that meeting with him. He told the author that some military personnel, as well as Virginia rocket company, the California company and TRW 6
management, would be in attendance. He said he would like for the author to
take along with him any key performance data he might need to answer technical questions about the underwater rocket motor design, testing or program. Having been caught with his pants down, so to speak, before, he always went to meetings, such as this, prepared to give a full presentation. He carried all his presentation viewgraphs with him. Recognizing that he might be called to the stage to answer questions, he sat on the front row, with his back to the audience. When the meeting convened, the program manager took the stage and identified himself and conducted the obligatory preliminaries. Then, to the authors shock and dismay, the program manager said he was turning the meeting over to the author, who had prepared a presentation. The author mounted the stage with confidence, congratulating himself with having come prepared. He had not seen the audience. When he turned to face the audience, he saw more top military brass in that audience than he had ever seen in his life, including his four years in the military and four years in college ROTC. The top management from the California company, TRW and the Virginia rocket company were facing him. He even recognized some congressmen. He had a moment of weak kneed shock until he realized that no one in that room knew as much about the underwater rocket motor as he did. All went well. That analysis is presented elsewhere on this web site.
UT-CSD Motor Analyses
After the author had developed the Static Firing Analysis computer routine to the point that he could determine effective burning surface area traces, apparent nozzle throat area history and efficiency histories; one of the scientists in the Research Group in the headquarters facility obtained an Air Force contract to study test firings of five United Technologies Chemical Systems Division (UTCSD) motors. His analyses brought out a number of features of that firing that had been denied by UT-CSD up to that time. Those analyses also gained a lot of credibility for the computer routine. The details of that study are presented elsewhere on this web site.
Nozzle Configuration Study
As a consequence of the UT-CSD analyses, the author was able to get a contract to do some nozzle configuration effects studies. He obtained a group of excess sub-scale burn rate motors that had been manufactured on the underwater rocket motor production program. He created a number of nozzle configurations that would enable him to determine the effects of nozzle configuration on motor performance. He learned a great deal from these tests. One of the things he learned was that a material called DUREZ (a wood flour 7
phenolic) would make excellent nozzle material under certain circumstances.
The material was cheap, easily processed and its behavior highly reproducible. He wrote a paper for a symposium about the study. He left the Virginia rocket company before the paper was completed and/or presented. The authors boss finished the paper, and presented it as a co-authored paper. The details of that study are presented elsewhere on this web site.
Burn Rate Regression Analysis
To the author, the two reserve sub-scale motors cast from each batch of underwater rocket motor propellant were a boon. After conducting the nozzle configuration tests, discussed above, he got permission to use some of the reserve motors to conduct nozzle materials studies, as well. But, the most interesting study that resulted from the nozzle materials study was the realization that, by using an ablative nozzle for a sub-scale motor firing and analyzing the pressure history for an instantaneous burn rate (backed out burn rate), a complete logarithm-of-burn-rate-versus-logarithm-of-pressure curve could be obtained from a single motor firing. Up to that time, a single sub-scale motor firing produced a single average burn rate at the motor average pressure. Because of uncertainty, each motor firing was duplicated, resulting in two motor firings for a single burn rate/pressure value. To properly define a burn rate versus the logarithm of pressure graph, three pressure points were required. That meant that six motor firings were required. That was what was required by the Navy on the underwater missile program. By using the ablative nozzle for sub-scale motor firings and analyzing them with the SFA computer program, a single motor firing could produce the entire burn rate graph (curve). A second sub-scale motor firing could duplicate the results. This approach eliminated the necessity of firing four of the six designated sub-scale motors. The details of that study are presented elsewhere on this web site.
Back-of-the-Envelope Design When the author first came to the Virginia rocket motor company, the Texas engineer was touted as one of the best back-of-the-envelope (BOTE) solid propellant rocket motor designers in the business. The author had, also, been taught that technique and was quite skilled at it. However, he never had an opportunity to demonstrate it at the Virginia rocket motor company. He was never satisfied with such a low level of accuracy or detail. He developed computer routines that gave great accuracy and detail in less time than one could do a BOTE design and document it.
An occasion arose in which four quite similar motor designs were to be
done and documented. The boss and his assistant took one set of requirements, the Texas engineer was given one set of requirements and the author was given two sets of requirements for which to design motors. Both of his designs were completed, with great accuracy, and documented before noon of the second day. Neither the boss nor the Texas engineers designs were close to being finished. The third day, the boss gave the author his design to finish. On the fourth day, the Texas engineer asked for his help to finish his own design. By the end of the fifth day, he had designed all four motors, calculated the performance prediction with great accuracy and documented the results, in detail, using the computer programs he had developed.
