Embedded Files
The rocket body is made of paper and the wings are made of wood. We used a paper cup as the fairing for better aerodynamics and a wooden cone at the nose. The payload and parachute are inside the fairing. The expectation is that the rocket engine will fire and push the rocket into the sky, and then the rocket will fire again to blow the fairing apart and separate from the payload and parachute.
Paper Rocket
Paper Rocket
Our paper rocket was such a success that even the camera couldn't keep up with the speed of the rocket.
Rocket Stimulation
Rocket Stimulation
Our First Design
Our First Design
The rocket has a long paper body and a small wooden delta wing. We used paper cups, cones and wooden cones to make the fairing. This gave the rocket a good aerodynamic shape and kept the databot from being exposed. Our original plan was to have the databot attached to the upper part of the fairing. This part would be blown apart when the rocket motor was re-ignited and then parachuted down to the ground.
Our Second Design
Our Second Design
The first rocket was badly damaged during launch so we rebuilt a new rocket. This rocket had a lot of changes. First we increased the size of the delta wing. This helped to improve the stability of the rocket. However, we learned that the rocket motor required a very low mass so we made a lot of changes, such as reducing the thickness of the delta wing to reduce the mass. In addition, we made the rocket shorter to reduce the mass.
First Test
First Test
The first rocket test yielded good results. Our rocket ignited successfully and flew out. However, it did not reach a high enough altitude, so when the rocket ignited again, it had already landed.
Second Test
Second Test
We made a new rocket since the old one is a little damaged on the pipe, and another reason is that we did the string test on our first rocket and it turns out the nose wasn't pointing forward which means the center pressure is higher that the center of gravity, so on our second rocket we made the area of the fins bigger so the center pressure will be under center of gravity which can make sure our rocket won't nose dive when launching.
On our second rocket, we also make the pipe shorter so the rocket will be lighter because our engine only has a lifting capacity of 85g. Although after shortening our second rocket its still overweight due to the big area of fins, however it lighter than our first rocket which make it flow higher in the air.
Parachute
Parachute
Although our parachutes did not deploy during launch, we still tested the parachutes.
Project Reflection
In our final week of the discover engineering course, we as a group gave everything we had left for a successful project. There were hardships and problems on the way, but in the end everything was completed. The first problem we ran into was difficulty in designing the rocket. RockSim was a difficult software to understand for us. This required a lot of dedication to learn the software. In the end, we used a preset template and changed a few aspects of it to make it our own.
The next challenge we faced were related to the final rocket which we built. The first issue we encountered was that the center of pressure was higher than the center of gravity. We discovered this by the string test. This test is just attaching a piece of string to the rocket and spinning it around. If the center of pressure is below the center of gravity, the rocket should not be able to move around in different directions. This was not the case the first we built the rocket. When we conducted our first test launch, we observed that the rocket was unstable due to this factor. A possible solution which we did implement was widening the fins. This solved the issue in later tests. We did stumble into 2 other issue as well.
The second issue was that rocket engine which we were provided (Estes A8-3) was not providing enough power to combat the weight. This led us to significantly altering the design to make the rocket shorter and lighter. We ended up cutting the fuselage in half a shaving every bit of extra wood of the fins and nose cone to reduce weight. This worked as well. However, the final issue was something which we ran out of time to solve.
During our final test of the rocket to see if it could eject the Databot, the parachute got stuck in the fuselage. This was due to it being to narrow and it getting stuck in tape. We could not resolve this issue as there were no spare rocket engines to use and we had run out of time.
Overall, this week has provided us with many learning in regard to aeronautical engineering. Not all aspects of an aircraft can be acounted for at all time. Different steps and measures are taken to make sure it is safe for air travel. That is one big learning that we takeaway from this week.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse