Publication Date

Spring 5-8-2026

School

School of Engineering and Computational Sciences

Major

Engineering: Mechanical

Keywords

rocket canards, stability, design optimization, surrogate modelling

Disciplines

Aeronautical Vehicles | Aerospace Engineering | Applied Mechanics | Computer-Aided Engineering and Design | Navigation, Guidance, Control, and Dynamics | Systems Engineering and Multidisciplinary Design Optimization

Abstract

Rocket canards are a common means of stabilizing a high-powered rocket in flight by producing aerodynamic forces to correct the rocket's trajectory. The size, shape, and position of the canards relative to the rocket body determine their control effectiveness and aerodynamic efficiency – two objectives of canard design with an inverse relationship to each other. By integrating automated iterative rocket trajectory simulation with adaptive surrogate modelling, this research optimized the canard planform geometry for a high-powered rocket to maximize the canards’ control effectiveness and aerodynamic efficiency through multi-variable, multi-objective design optimization. The canard design was first parameterized into four design variables (root chord, tip chord, height, and position) which were then used to formulate expressions for the canards’ induced moment (a measure of the canards’ corrective authority) and for the rocket’s simulated apogee (a measure of the canards’ aerodynamic performance). Upon optimizing these two objective functions, it was found that the optimal solution set of canard designs consists of single position, root chord, and height values with variation in the tip chord being the primary determinate of the values of the two objective functions.

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