Development of a System Level Optimization Tool to Facilitate Preliminary Design of the SLS BOLE Solid Rocket Motor

An integrated system optimization tool was developed for the preliminary design of launch vehicles incorporating solid rocket motors. Solid rocket motor propellant grain design, detailed motor performance analysis and vehicle trajectory modeling were integrated to provide a high-fidelity design assessment. In order to accommodate complex design cases with long objective function runtimes, the optimization tool was created with the capability to operate in a massively parallel, high performance computing environment. This additional computational capability increased the tool's overall design evaluation rate by orders of magnitude, relative to operating on a PC workstation, and provides a vast upgrade in its application potential. This optimization tool was successfully applied to the preliminary design trade study of the Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension solid rocket motor to assess potential performance gains for the Space Launch System vehicle. The trade study was comprised of 128 individual optimization searches intended to thoroughly characterize the optimal performance and design across the trade space. The results of this study provided useful information to Space Launch System decision makers and laid the framework for subsequent detailed design and analysis work, and would not have been feasible prior to scaling the numerical optimization tool to the high performance computer environment.