EXPERIMENTAL MEASUREMENTS OF MISSILE DYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS

Determination of a missile dynamic characteristics or parameters and aerodynamic derivatives are indispensable when analyzing the flight path trajectory. The missile dynamic parameters include its center of pressure (c.p.) location, the center of gravity (c.g.) location and the moments of inertia around the principal axes. These parameters can be determined either by the vectorial sum of those for individual sections in the missile or globally by measurement with appropriate laboratory installations. The experimental measurements are considered the more accurate as it considers the interactions or interferences between different parts of the missile body with different sources of anomalies. Therefore, this paper is devoted to describe the procedure of measuring the missile c.g. and moments of inertia experimentally. Then, it is complemented with a numerical case study for its justification.