ISSUE 462 Februrary 6th, 2018

IN THIS ISSUE
Model Rocket Stability

www.ApogeeRockets.com/Rocket_Kits/Skill_Level_4_Kits/Hydra_VII
 Model Rocket Stability
By Timothy Van Milligan Locating the Center-of-Gravity
The definition for model rocket stability is Finding the center-of-gravity is easy because all
when the Center-of-Gravity (CG) is in front of you have to do is balance the rocket on your finger
the Center-of-Pressure (CP). The further dis- or the edge of a ruler. It is the balance point of the
tance the CG is in front of the CP, the more rocket.
stable the rocket will be.

Figure 3: The Center-of-Gravity is the point where the rock-

et balances. Half of the weight of the rocket is on either side
of the balance point.
Figure 1: A stable rocket is defined as one where the Cen- When you perform a balance check to find the
ter-of-Gravity is forward of the Center-of-Pressure. Center-of-Gravity, always put a new rocket motor
“Stability” for us essentially means to fly a in the back end. This will give you the worst case
predictable flight path. We desire the nose of the situation, which is the furthest back the CG of the
rocket to point forward and the model to fly in a rocket will be during the flight. As the rocket engine
predictable trajectory so that the launch is safe. burns, the back end of the rocket gets lighter, and
You can equate stability with safety. the CG position moves forward. If you locate the
In an unstable rocket, where the Cen- CG of the rocket after the flight, you will notice that
ter-of-Pressure is in front the of the Cen- the balance point has moved towards the nose
ter-of-Gravity, the rocket will tumble end-over- cone.
end and fly an erratic path. It is always bad and
should be avoided. Locating the Center-of-Pressure
Finding the Center-of-Pressure of the rocket is a
lot harder. To understand why this is, you have to
understand what the Center-of-Pressure is.
The definition of Center-of-Pressure is the point
on the rocket where all the aerodynamic forces
balance. There are two aerodynamic forces that
act on a rocket. They are the forces of Lift and
Figure 2. In an unstable rocket, the center-of-pressure is Drag. These forces are only present when the
forward of the center-of-gravity. rocket is moving through the air. If there is no
movement, there are no forces. This is why we
Join Tripoli.org can’t easily find the CP point like we can find the
Mention Apogee Components CG location.

About this Newsletter Continued on page 3

You can subscribe to receive this e-zine FREE Newsletter Staff
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Writer: Timothy Van Milligan
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Page 2 Issue 462 | February 6th, 2018

 Model Rocket Stability
Continued from page 2 (the blue arrows). Each component contributes to
You can feel the aerodynamic forces by stick- the overall lift force on the rocket. The spring and
ing your hand out the window of a moving car. the pink arrow represents the downward force
If you have your palm facing into the air, you necessary to prevent the rocket from moving. The
can feel the pressure trying to push it back. This position of the spring is the important thing here.
is the Drag force. If you hold your hand palm If it is located at the center of pressure location,
facing downward in the air stream, and then you then the rocket will be perfectly stable and won’t
slightly twist it so your palm starts to face into move up or down, nor will it tilt up (called “pitch”)
the oncoming wind, you’ll feel your whole hand nor rotate side-to-side (called “yaw”). If you pull
rise upwards. This is the Lift force. down on the spring, the rocket will maintain its
stable orientation with respect to the wind (the
green arrows).

Figure 4: You can feel the aerodynamic forces of lift and drag
on your hand as you stick it out the window of a moving car. Figure 5: The Center-of-Pressure is where the lift and drag
forces on a rocket balance. The blue arrows indicate lift forc-
The same aerodynamic forces of Lift and es trying to pull the rocket upward. The pink arrow is the
Drag are acting on a rocket too. In fact, every force you’d have to apply to balance against the lift forces.
part of the rocket feels a small force of Lift and If the spring is right at the Center-of-Pressure location, the
Drag. There are lift and drag on the nose cone, rocket will not tilt, rotate, or move up/down. It will stay
the tube, and the fins. It isn’t really just one steady in the airflow.
force. It is distributed over the entire surface.
Continued on page 4
But we engineers want to simplify things. We
want to combine all those individual forces and
say they are pushing on just one single point on
the rocket. In essence, we’d like to balance all
the forces, so that we can say that half of the
forces are in front of the balance point and the
other half are behind it.
This balance point is called the “Center of
Pressure.” It can also be called the “Aerody-
namic Center,” but that is more common when
talking about airplanes. In rocketry, we just call
it the Center of Pressure.
Figure 5 shows the lift forces on the rocket www.ApogeeRockets.com/RockSim/RockSim_Information

Page 3 Issue 462 | February 6th, 2018

 Model Rocket Stability
Continued from page 3

The best and most accurate way to find the

Center-of-Pressure point is to balance the rock-
et in a wind tunnel that is blowing air over the
rocket.

Figure 7: The CP point is that location where the rocket

won’t rotate because the forces one side of the rocket bal-
ance out with the forces on the other.
The downside of the wind tunnel is that you
rarely have one that is big enough that the entire
rocket will easily fit inside of it. So we look for oth-
er ways to estimate the CP point on the rocket.
The next best thing is to use a software program
like RockSim (https://www.apogeerockets.com/
Figure 6: Here the girl is holding the rocket on a caliper to RockSim/RockSim_Information). RockSim cal-
find the balance point. culates the CP position on the rocket using the
Barrowman Equations. You can download the
Actually, instead of pointing the nose into the original Barrowman report from the Apogee Com-
airstream, the rocket should be held sideways ponents web site at: https://www.apogeerockets.
to the airflow like in Figure 7. If you put the com/downloads/barrowman_report.pdf. You can
balance point at the right location on the rocket, do the calculations long-hand, but after you do it
the rocket should stay oriented sideways to the once, you’ll realize that it is a chore and you’ll be
airflow. That balance point, where it stays side- happy to let a computer do the calculations for
ways without rotating, is the Center-of-Pressure you. It does it instantaneously so you can see the
location. If the rocket doesn’t spin on the pivot, results as you make changes to the rocket.
this means that the forces on the front part of the
Continued on page 5
rocket balance out the forces on the rear of the
rocket.

https://www.apogeerockets.com/Rocket-Kits/Skill-Level-3-Model-Rocket-Kits/Slo-Mo

Page 4 Issue 462 | February 6th, 2018

Model Rocket Stability
Continued from page 4 Additional Resources:
Build your own wind tunnel - Peak-of-Flight News-
Avion
Length: 15.2500 In. , Diameter: 0.9764 In. , Span diameter: 4.8799 In.
Mass 46.558 g , Selected stage mass 46.558 g
letter #252 (https://www.apogeerockets.com/edu-
CG: 11.6387 In., CP: 12.7681 In., Margin: 1.16
Engines: [C6-5] cation/downloads/Newsletter252.pdf)
P (M) (M)

CG CP
Peak-of-Flight Newsletter articles dealing with
rocket stability: https://www.apogeerockets.com/
Peak-of-Flight?pof_list=topics&#Rocket_Stability
Figure 8: RockSim uses the Barrowman Equations to find
the CP location of the rocket, as well as the CG so that the Model Rocket Design and Construction (https://
stability can be estimated. www.apogeerockets.com/Rocket_Books_Videos/
The downside to the Barrowman Equations is Books/Model_Rocket_Design_And_Construction)
that they assume some things, like that the shape
of the rocket is long and skinny, and that the rock- Avion rocket kit - https://www.apogeerockets.com/
et is flying at a low angle-of-attack. Because of Rocket-Kits/Skill-Level-1-Model-Rocket-Kits/Avion
these limitations, there is a little bit of uncertainty
as to the exact position of the CP. We’re pretty About The Author:
confident it is where the equations estimate it at, Tim Van Milligan (a.k.a. “Mr. Rocket”) is a real
but not 100% certain. Because of this, we need to rocket scientist who likes helping out other rock-
build in a little factor-of-safety into the rocket. eteers. He is an avid rocketry competitor and is
The factor-of-safety is called the “Stability Mar- Level 3 high power certified. He is often asked
gin.” It is a number that tells us the relative dis- what is the biggest rocket he’s ever launched.
tance the CG is in front of the CP. By definition, it His answer is that before he started writing arti-
is the actual distance they are apart, divided by cles and books about rocketry, he worked on the
the body tube diameter. Therefore, it is a number Delta II rocket that launched satellites into orbit.
that doesn’t have any units. But if it is a number He has a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from
of 1.0, that means the CG is 1.0 body tube diam- Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona
eters in front of the CP. In Figure 8, the Margin Beach, Florida, and has worked toward an M.S.
is 1.16, which indicates the CG is 1.16 times the in Space Technology from the Florida Institute of
body diameter in front of the CP. Technology in Melbourne, Florida. Currently, he
The factor of safety we use in model rocketry is is the owner of Apogee Components (http://www.
that we want the CG at least 1.0 body tube diam- apogeerockets.com) and also the author of the
eters in front of the CP; which tells us the static books: Model Rocket Design and Construction, 69
margin is 1.0. Greater than 1.0 is okay. It’s when Simple Science Fair Projects with Model Rockets:
the Static Margin is less than 1.0 that you should Aeronautics and publisher of the “Peak-of-Flight”
be concerned. newsletter, a FREE e-zine newsletter about model
rockets. You can email him by using the contact
Conclusion form at https://www.apogeerockets.com/Contact.
This article is the basics of rocket stability.
From this point, you can go a lot deeper into the
subject and additional links and resources are
listed below. If you found this information useful,
we hope you’ll share this page with your friends
and link to it on your own website.

Page 5 Issue 462 | February 6th, 2018