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Old 05-27-2019, 08:54 AM
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Rktman Rktman is offline
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Join Date: May 2019
Location: Chapel Hill, NC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by teflonrocketry1
At best this is a marginally stable design, a quick RockSim simulation (attached) based on the photos you provided gives a stability margin of only 0.75 calibers with a D12-5 motor installed. It will take at least 1/2 ounce of nose weight to bring the stability margin up to 1.05 calibers for a stable flight. 290 feet above ground level (AGL) on a C11-3 and 748 feet AGL on a D12-5 with the added nose weight. Due to the large fin surface area, I would not fly this design in winds above 7mph. For a better simulation you need to provide me with measurements and other design details. As already mentioned lengthening the main body tube by about 3 inches will also bring the stability margin to the same levels as adding nose weight.

Aerodynamically, if you did a wind tunnel simulation of this design, I would guess that the lower set of fins are in the turbulent zone generated by the upper set of fins, thus they would have no effect on the the stability of the rocket! Taking this into account gives an unstable situation of -0.92 calibers with the D12-5 motor and requires about 6 ounces of added nose weight for stability at 1.01 calibers or lengthening the main body tube by 17 inches for the same margin. The performance is greatly reduced to 81 feet AGL for the C11-3 and 263 feet AGL for the D12-5 with the added nose weight, lengthening the main body tube more than doubles these attained altitudes.


I believe you and Earl and Frognbuf are correct that it's unstable even though I assumed it was because it was modeled after a lot of tractor type rockets where the motor and weight is set far forward. It ended up heavy because I added 1.2 oz of lead weight to the nose thinking it would solve the problem. I had hoped to keep the BT short to keep the "Box Kite" look but it seems I'll have to give up on that.

BTW Teflon, that sim you did is amazingly accurate given you were working just from the pics I attached. Even your filename (Cubix) happened to be the same as what I settled on calling it. Attached my working sketches w/ dimensions below.
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