Research on the Collision Checking during the Boosters-Separation Based on Spatial Geometry Structure

Dynamic clearance calculation and collision checking during the elastic boosters-separation is essential to the design of separation scheme, which assesses the reasonability of the design. Traditional clearance calculation method has to traverse all the separation bodies and detect the minimal distance, which is extremely low in calculation efficiency. A new method is proposed in this paper to deal with the problem. First of all, the minimal distance between non-uniplanar lines and cylinders is derived based on the spatial geometry, and then based on this analytical result, the dynamic clearance calculation method combining the analytical and numerical approaches is proposed and validated. The lateral separation process of a launch vehicle with strapped-on boosters is studied, the separation dynamic clearance of which is calculated with both the traditional method and the proposed method. It is shown through the comparison that the new method can assure the required accuracy and drastically reduce the calculation time. The proposed method can be applied to the separation scheme design of launch vehicles with strapped-on boosters, and provide basis for the design and separation simulation.