Introduction to the Small Rocket Project (SRP)

The small rocket project is a project for bachelor students of engineering faculties at TU Delft who wants to have practical experience in building an amateur rocket. The project is every year organized by the senior members of DARE (Delft Aerospace Rocket Society).
Students who wants to take part in the project are divided in teams; the ultimate mission of every team is the following: "Launching a small rocket able to reach about 1000 meters of altitude mounting an egg as a payload and recovering it intact".

On top of gaining practical experience, experiencing the full cycle design of a rocket and improving team working skills, the SRP gives young students the chance of getting to know the rocket society, their team leaders and the project carried out in the society.

The WBPP team at work at the military base of 'T Hard

Students experience a full cycle engineering design from the conceptual design, to testing and finally to the launch of the rocket. Teams are certainly guided throughout the project by their mentors, but most of the times they are left outside their confort zone and they have to figure out engineering solutions by themselves. This is where the real learning occurs.

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Requirements Generation

Following the system engineering design, the first step to start with the preliminary design of the rocket was understanding the requirements that the mission involved. Generating a requirement list was essential in order to give a more accurate shape to the product we had to obtain. An analysis of the subsystems of the rocket was also made and requirement concerning different subsystems were generated. Requirements List: The maximum flight-time has to be 90 s. This is established by NAVRO which is the association in the Netherlands for amatory rockets. In fact the rocket had to land inside the military area at 't Hard; considering the worse case scenario in terms of wind speed and direction, a maximum time flight was determined considering that the rocket could not go out of the military area in it surely didn't have to fly towards the observatory area. The air space was closed over the military area for the period of duration of the launches. However the maximum ...

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Advanced Design Configuration

So where to start building a rocket? Even though a small rocket such as the one the WBPP didn't have many subsystems, we split up the group so that each one of us could look at the requirement and design his subsystem and then present it to the others. However before going too much into the details of the rocket, the software Open Rocket was used to come up with a first design iteration of our "space" vehicle making sure to meet the requirements given by the safety board. Eventually each subsystem was considered individually and considering load cases, ease of manufacture and systems accessibility before launch design decisions were made. Open Rocket Estimations The engine file corresponding to the one that our rocket would have mounted was uploaded to the designing file; this would have granted us to have reasonable prediction of the rocket's flight in absence of wind. Since the team opted for a separation of the rocket in two parts at the moment of the parac...

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Requirement Analysis and Conceptual Design

The first stage of the design phase was analysing the requirements and understanding how they would have affected the rocket subsystems. The team had to come up with a preliminary design at the end of the first three weeks and present it to the senior members of the society. In this way the design could be reviewed and a check of the progress of the subsystems could be carried out. The first step was sketching and coming up with ideas for the rocket systems; as a matter of fact the WBPP started dividing the rocket in three sections: Upper section: this section would have contained the payload, and the electronics Middle section: this section was dedicated to the parachute; from the beginning the team opted for an axial recovery system that would split the rocket in two parts. Lower section: the engine which was already provided and it was not object of the design nor investigation. Exploration An exploration design process started; considerations and design...

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Small Rocket Project

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