TOOLCHAIN FOR AERODYNAMIC CHARACTERIZATION OF A ROCKET DURING ASCENT USING OPENFOAM

Computational Fluid Dynamics tools from providers such as ANSYS (Fluent) or Siemens (StarCCM+) can be a financial burden for small businesses and startups alike. Thus, open-source alternatives such as OpenFOAM are increasingly appealing for reducing development costs. However, OpenFOAM has largely remained a research tool reserved for academia due to its lack of documentation, a high level of expertise required, and a lack of standardization and Graphical User Interface. This paper identifies these shortcomings and aims to streamline the process, which is generally reserved for academia, thus easing the commercial adoption of this tool. This document presents an OpenFOAM solution for generating an aerodynamic database for a rocket, including all relevant aerodynamic coefficients. Two solvers, rhoPimpleFoam, a pressure-based solver, and rhoCentralFoam, a density-based solver, are compared to determine which one better matches the expected aerodynamic coefficients. A wind-tunnel-validated geometry for a rocket has been identified and used to assess the results’ validity. Finally, lessons learned regarding the project’s organizational structure, including automation, standardization, and scalability, are discussed to showcase their potential application in other industrial cases. All necessary tools for this Computational Fluid Dynamics toolchain are freely available.