• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.171-181
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• 2003

The nose fairings of KSR-III are designed to be separated from the rocket by explosive force at the mission altitude to expose the payload. Adequate amount of separation force should be imposed to allow safe separation without collision between the fairings and the rocket, and the separation device was designed for the separation at very high altitude where almost no air load was expected. As the development of KSR-III goes on, several design changes have made and lower separation altitude of 45km is expected as a result. Under these circumstances, it is required to determine if the nose fairings can be separated without collision with much severer air load than for the design condition. In this study, the 6-DOF motion analysis program, PASEM, which was developed to predict the strap-on booster separation, is modified to simulate the pivotal motion of the fairings at early stages of separation. The accuracy of pivot motion simulation is validated by comparison with the results of ground test and the accurate separation conditions are deduced from it. Trajectory simulations are performed to see if separation without collision is possible with varying angle of attack, direction of gravity, and the effect of gust. It is also found that reducing the separation angle of the clamshell hinge from 60 degrees to 40 degrees can enhance separation safety and separation at lower altitude of 40km can be done without collision.