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Completed TRL 3 (started at 2, targeting 3)
The Advanced Solid Propulsion Integrated Runtime Environment (ASPIRE) aspires to be the next-generation solid propulsion performance analysis code, built to participate in the modern analysis ecosystem, improve model accuracy, and harness historic knowledge. The only mature, industry ballistics code, the Solid Performance Program (SPP), has intrinsic deficiencies including incompatibility with modern Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) systems and inability to model complex but important solid propulsion behaviors. ASPIRE enables collaboration by integrating a ballistics solver into modern CAE environments, enabling efficient utilization of existing geometry and multi-disciplinary analysis capabilities. Integration with multi-physics modeling capability opens the door to modeling advanced behaviors such as deformed grain ballistics, ignition, burnout, coning, erosive burning, and scarfed, valved, or angled nozzles. Finally, just as other disciplines use material or part libraries, ASPIRE will utilize a knowledge capture database of SRM designs to accelerate and contextualize future mission analyses. While similar capabilities are in development at the primary US solid propulsion vendors, Northrup Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne, they are not available to the propulsion community. ASPIRE will enable independent verification of these advanced industry capabilities and will be the first product of its kind to be widely available across academia, industry, and government partners.
Current solid propulsion ballistics solutions utilize the legacy Fotran code, SPP, which is incompatible with modern analysis tools and lacks the capability to model important effects. Support of current projects is constrained by the limitations of our tools. While some advanced custom solutions are in use in industry, no modern solution is available to NASA or the community, leaving us unable to validate industry solutions or drive those innovations. A modern ballistics solution should integrate with the Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Analysis capabilities in use across propulsion to enable multidisciplinary analysis and streamline design cycles.
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