blog of nick

RocketSuite: project synthesis and goals

2/22/26

During my senior year of college I developed a solid rocket motor simulator in MATLAB. It was capable of taking propellant characteristics and geometry input through a selected excel file, simulating the burn using the FMM (fast marching method) numerical method, and displaying results contours of how the motor burned over time as well as graphing parameters like Kn, thrust, chamber pressure over time. The need for this project came from the desire to simulate chamfered BATES grains, which the current motor simulation software my team used, OpenMotor, did not support. I would be remiss not to credit OpenMotor as inspiration for my simulator. I looked over OpenMotor's GitHub page before starting and saw that it used the FMM numerical method, which I used as a starting point for my simulator. However, I wanted this to be my own, so the idea to use FMM, the use of two equations, and variables outputted in the GUI is the extent of inspiration from OpenMotor. I eventually got my simulator to work, with results comparable to OpenMotor. Then, I added pseudo-finocyl grain geometry capability. During this, I noticed that my simulator was significantly slower than OpenMotor. To address this, instead of using a pre-written MATLAB toolbox for FMM, I wrote my own FMM method in MATLAB and exported it into C. This whole process required significant modifications to the code, but in the end it reduced runtime by 90%. I thought that was cool.

It was a satisfying project that kept evolving with my rocketry team's needs, but it never actually ended up being used. And since then I've been thinking of how I can improve or build upon my experience of this project. An idea of a full-stack rocket simulation software has been floating around my head for a while, and although it feels like a huge endeavor, I think it would be a great way to learn about all aspects of rockets. So I'm officially declaring Sunday, February 22nd, 2026, as the official start of this "RocketSuite" project! Some ideas I have about what I want this to be:

• It is definitely going to be open source. There are a lot of people that know a lot more about rocketry than me, and having anyone interested being able to review my code is super helpful.
• For the solid rocket motor side, I want the main simulation engine to be able to import CAD files, like STEP files, and conduct 3D simulations of the burn. This is a big step up in fidelity from my last simulator, which just simulates 2D slices of a 3D motor. Being able to conduct a true 3D simulation would allow me to capture the effects of more complex 3D geometries. Once imported, I also want the capability to select which faces are inhibited directly from the GUI. Plus, having the capability to simulate from CAD files will eliminate the need to code multiple grain geometry profiles.
• I really don't know anything about how liquid or hybrid rocket motors are simulated, aside from CFD. If there is anything I can do that is short of programming a full CFD engine, I am interested in learning and implementing it.
• Once a motor has been simulated, I'd like the ability to switch tabs within the program and begin general rocket geometry development, something akin to OpenRocket. I'd also like to include some capabilities of RASAero. I think it would be cool to use CAD files for this as well, but knowing how complex rocket CAD can get as opposed to solid motor CAD, I'm not sure if this is feasible for me. In any case, I want to be able to simulate the trajectory of a finished rocket. I don't plan on including any commercial parts like OpenRocket as I want this tool to be geared more towards specialists.
• Basically, any calculation or consideration you make when designing a rocket, I want to be part of this program.