Optimization of a Water Rocket in OpenMDAO/dymos

Abstract

This work presents a model of a soda-bottle water rocket developed with NASA's OpenMDAO 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 flight range and height at apogee with respect to empty mass, initial water volume and launch angle are presented.