How to Design Pressure Vessels, Propellant Tanks, and Rocket Motor Casings

This guide is a companion to the Casing Design spreadsheet included in HalfCatSim. The first part of this document gives an overview of the first-principles approach to designing a pressure vessel to contain fuel, oxidizer, or combustion in an amateur setting, and covers bulkheads, O-Rings, thermal liner interfaces, pressure ports, pistons, and concentric tanks. The second part covers the process of analyzing the stresses present in pressure vessel casings, closures, fasteners, and casing-nozzle interface surfaces. It assumes that you are working from a known pressure and does not include any design information about the internal ballistics of a solid rocket motor itself – i.e., grain geometry, regression rate, propellant flow, or nozzle throat diameter.