Design and experimental evaluation of a missile lateral thruster

Abstract

Lateral thrusters are small, short-duration rocket motor mounted on the lateral side of the missile to provide a force able to change the missile's direction. In the present paper, a design and experimental evaluation of a solid propellant thruster is considered. The design starts from technical requirements, internal ballistic calculation, thruster prototype manufacturing and finally static tests on a static test bench to evaluate its internal pressure profile. In design, the propellant imperfections are considered. After tests and simulations, a comparative analysis between the analytical and the experimental results is done.