Optimization of a Water Rocket in OpenMDAO/dymos

Abstract

This work presents a model of a soda-bottle water rocket developed with NASA'sOpenMDAO Dymos optimal control multidisciplinary framework. This is an acces-sible example that is able to highlight many of the benfitts and challenges of multi-disciplinary optimization and of collocation methods. Optimization results for flightrange and height at apogee with respect to empty mass, initial water volume andlaunch angle are presented.