Passa ai contenuti principali

Premises of the Small Rocket Project Blog

The aim of this blog was not really clear to the writer at the beginning: there was the wish of bringing together all the knowledge created during the designing and manufacturing process of the rocket; at the same time it was important to document every bit of the experience transmitting the reader the joy of doing such project. 

In other words if on the one side the reader will know the procedures and the techniques used to manufacture and build an amatory rocket with the peculiar mission of mounting an egg as a payload and recovering it intact on the ground, on the other he/she will have a good laugh reading about the nerdy adventures of the team from February to May 2017.

As a writer, I just hope to provide sufficient information to anyone who wants to reproduce the project, while keeping the narration entertaining and funny.



Commenti

Post popolari in questo blog

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 ...

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...

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...