Health Monitoring and Diagnosis of Solid Rocket Motors with Bore Cracks

Abstract

A finite-element-based computational model is used to investigate the effects of bore cracking on stress distributions in solid rocket motors (SRMs) at various storage temperatures. Capabilities of a rocket-motor health-monitoring system are assessed based on the assumption that the proposed stress sensors are evenly distributed along the circumference of the inside of the motor case. A quantitative relationship is obtained between the crack depth and the sensor data to inversely estimate the size of bore cracks in the motor. It is shown that the proposed type of sensing system can detect critical bore cracks in SRMs.