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I'm working on a simulator for landing the falcon 9 booster rocket. I'm aiming to incorporate aspects like the effects of restorative torque. However, I've been trying to figure out how to determine the center of pressure. All I was able to find were either very complicated calcultions, or methods for uniform pressure scenarios. I'm uncertain about calculating it during atmospheric descent. Are there any straightforward approximations for this situation?

I'm also looking to include components such as grid fins. Does it make sense to calculate their forces separately from the rocket itself? Or should it be combined?

IsolatedSushi
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    Please include links to the things you thought were "very complicated", so we don't send you back to the same places, and to give us an idea of the level of complication you want. – Ryan C Aug 28 '23 at 17:21
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    http://ftp.demec.ufpr.br/foguete/bibliografia/TIR-33%20Calculating%20the%20Center%20of%20Pressure%20of%20a%20Model%20Rocket.pdf – Russell Borogove Aug 28 '23 at 21:21
  • For non-lifting bodies (e.g. no camber, e.g. a typical rocket body) the center of pressure is roughly equal to the center of area. – A McKelvy Aug 28 '23 at 22:34
  • See https://space.stackexchange.com/a/25859/6944 for simple methods to approximate it. – Organic Marble Aug 29 '23 at 00:58
  • Note that if your vehicle isn't changing shape, you can precompute the center of pressure from all angles of attack. – Steve Aug 29 '23 at 18:16
  • Not sure I'd even do 'every' angle of attack. Since the rocket is radially symmetrical (approximately), I would think you could calculate the CP at, say, every 45 degrees from nose-up to nose-down (relative to the airflow, not the ground, of course), and then during the simulation just linearly interpolate between those points to find an approximate location for the current angle of attack. You can do more precalculations if you want the interpolation to be more nearly accurate. – Darth Pseudonym Aug 30 '23 at 15:50

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