SIUe Cougar Rockets

Mission:

Cougar Rockets was formed with the mission to provide students with the opportunity to apply their classroom knowledge to aerospace systems by designing, building, and flying various aerial vehicles. These vehicles include but are not limited to: high power rockets, autonomous UAVs, and multirotor aircraft. Membership is open to students regardless of major or experience.

Leadership/Contribution:

UAV Sub-team Leader (Fall 2019 - Spring 2022)
Lead Mechanical Designer For UAV (Fall 2019 - Spring 2022)

Vice President (Fall 2020 - Spring 2021)
President (Fall 2021 - Spring 2022)

Competition Objective:

Launch a rocket powered vehicle in excess of 8,000' AGL. The rocket must contain a golf ball payload. Must recover the payload safely at a predetermined location on the ground without descending faster than 30 fps.

For more information: http://www.argoniacup.com/

Argonia Cup 2022 Rocket Launched UAV

The Plan :

For the 2022 Argonia Cup Competition we are going with a 5" diameter rocket that will carry our custom designed folding UAV to over 8000' in altitude. After reaching 8000' in altitude a drogue parachute is deployed and the rocket continues to fall. Once the rocket falls to 500' in altitude a main parachute is deployed that slows the rocket airframe down to below 30 ft/s as per competition guide lines. After the main chute is deployed the nose cone is ejected and the UAV is ejected from the rocket airframe. Upon ejection, the UAV's wings and rear control surfaces deploy. The UAV is navigated manually by a pilot on the ground using FPV and GPS for navigation.

UAV Design :

The UAV was designed with ease of manufacturing in mind, the entire UAV was designed to be laser cut from foam core board. The aircraft was mostly made from low cost foam core board and Color Fab LW-PLA, we were able to quickly test, iterate, and build multiple UAVs for testing. The UAV featured a pusher style setup with the motor in the rear of the craft, to leave the leave the front unobstructed for the FPV camera. In order to fit within the body of a 5" diameter rocket the wings, rear control surfaces, and propellers had to be able to fold and automatically unfold once ejected from the rocket. After testing various wing deployment designs, we decided that a simple elastic band actuation was the most effective and lightest solution.

Results:

Unfortunately we were not able to compete in the 2022 Argonia cup. Due to low member numbers and loosing our level 2 certified rocketeer, myself and one other person were the only ones left to continue working on the UAV project. With our senior capstone projects and other school requirements our focus was pulled from this project more than we would have liked. We achieved our flight stability goals with the static place model and determined that it could be successfully navigated to target from a high altitude. The wing folding mechanisms were finalized and tested but were not fully integrated into the plane. I would love to one day come back and finish this project.

Argonia Cup 2021

3D Printed Electronics Bay

This video footage was transmitted live from the rocket, and was recorded on the ground. The rocket reached apogee well above 8000'

The images above show just a glimpse into our time at the 2021 Argonia Cup Competition. As a team we achieved 4th place out of 17 schools. The picture above shows the electronics bay that I had design that was used in the rocket. The electronics bay housed the a 5.8 GHz FPV transmitter, a Easy Mini rocket controller (used to track apogee and detonate black powder charges), a RunCam FPV camera, and a PixHawk 4 (Wanted to test if the PixHawk's internal gyroscope/accelerometers could handle the forces associated with a high powered rocket launch).

UAV Testing

(The UAVs Tested Below Were Designed By Myself)

Spring Loaded Air Speed Sensor

Testing UAV Safety Parachute Deployment

Description: In case of any issues or failure after the UAV was ejected from the rocket, I developed a safety parachute system that would deploy a parachute using black powder if the UAV was falling faster than the allowed 30fps or if we remotely triggered it from the ground.

Testing 3D Printed Folding Propeller Hub

Nose Cone Black Powder Ejection Testing

Testing UAV Rear Control Surface Folding Mech.

DIY Black Powder Motor Testing

Description: After watching a few videos on creating sugar rocket motors I wanted to give making a rocket motor a try. The casing is 3D printed and wrapped in masking tape for more support. The motor was packed using black powder I had made in an earlier project for the rocket club. This was the first test and we can see that we need some sort of nozzle to produce more thrust.

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