Design of FSAPDS Using Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (OpenMDAO)

Abstract

Multidisciplinary design analysis and optimization (MDAO) has achieved a fair amount of success in the aerospace industry catering to the need of integration of highly complex disciplines in the same. Such a complexity is shared to some extent in the designing of an ammunition. In this paper, we have tried to develop an MDAO framework for the design of an armor piercing fin stabilized discarding sabot (FSAPDS). The optimization framework contains a physics solver that needs to account for all the physics that can be modeled right from the combustion of the propellant to the target penetration. The modules that the framework in this paper integrates are design assembly, internal ballistics, in-bore travel, the trajectory of the ammunition modeled by two DOF equations and finally target penetration. These individual modules have been developed in-house. The final integration and the development of the framework have been performed using Python. Optimization has been performed using OpenMDAO. The structure of the framework has been depicted using an extended design structure matrix (XDSM). This paper explores the possibility of attempting to model such a complex system and to use optimization tools to narrow down the huge design space generated by the large number of design variables present in the physical system.