Back to News
09/27/09 - Summer Results and Start to Fall '09
This update has been in the queue for quite a while. Best to just get started with a chronological bullet point synopsis of our summer:
NASA USLI Rocket Competition Final Results
There has been a ludicrous amount of press regarding the recent NASA USLI competition. This includes the following article that was written by ASU and picked up by Rocketry Planet: http://www.rocketryplanet.com/content/view/2854/31/ . As for the end results, Arizona State placed 5th out of 19 teams. Despite winning the closest to altitude award, there were many more points to be counted.
The overall winner was USU who were the winners last year. They have a neat program perfectly suited for this type of competition. Basically their year-long senior design class projects IS the NASA USLI project. Therefore they have a large group of people and help from graduate students and their professor. There were a few other teams at the competition set up like this, and it's definitely something to look into for the future. Unfortunately, limiting such a program to only seniors will drastically decrease the amount of hands-on knowledge transfer to the other undergraduate members except through the papers and any graduate students that stick around. Such a program would have to be leveraged by participation in other competitions as well.
We are already hard at work on the proposals for the 2009 - 2010 NASA USLI Competition. Daedalus was fortunate enough to have been granted three (3) NASA Space Grant undergraduate interns for the 2009-2010 school year under the advisement of the Project Manager. That guarantees at least 30 hours of solid paid-work a week put directly towards the competition.
Engineering Student Awards
Daedalus won the Best Group of the year from the ASU Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering board of engineering student organizations (BESO). In addition the Daedalus Project Manager (that would be me) won the Student Leader of the Year award. Both come with cash prizes and a plaque.
4th ESRA Intercollegiate Rocket Competition
We again traveled to Green River, Utah to partake in the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA) 4th Intercollegiate Rocket Competition. This was our third year in the competition. We were very happy to see that ESRA added an "advanced" competition, and even more excited to see that UW and CSULB were joining the competition. ESRA is having a steady increase in their participation and I'm sure in a few years time there will be upwards of a dozen schools once it catches on more.
We brought two rockets: VCM (second from left) for the "basic" competition, fresh from its flight in Huntsville and a rocket tentatively named "Con Fuego" which is the big one in the picture. Con Fuego is a big two stager. We had planned on flying our hybrid motor at the ESRA competition, but it wasn't ready at the time. So we decided to switch out the upper stage hybrid with a simple solid rocket motor of our design to get close to the 25,000 foot waiver. Unfortunately, our only competition (UCLA) for the "advanced" competition dropped out. We were going to fly it regardless, but weather got in the way, and it just wasn't worth the risk.
Unfortunately, we did not do too well at the "basic" competition. Despite having flown the VCM rocket twice before this competition the team still encountered a rather severe problem. The only real difference from this flight compared to the other two was the use of a larger M-motor and some more ballast weight to get the payload weight up to 10lbs. However, the only real place to put the extra weight was near the already heavy motor. As such, VCM was not expected to have much CG travel. This was a bit of a problem since the fins are placed eight inches from the bottom of the rocket, so stability became an issue. The rocket still had one caliber of stability but was not expected to improve as the motor burned.
Our first attempt to launch VCM was halted due to high winds. So much in fact that the wind measuring device that CSULB brought had broken and sent a small weather balloon attached to a line a mile downrange. We waited out the worst of the winds but it never really died down to speeds I was comfortable with. Unfortunately we were on a time crunch so we had to launch anyway; not our best decision.
Video: VCM ESRA 2009 launch
The launch went relatively smoothly, but there was a bit of wobbling. And then right near burnout the rocket took a turn for the worst, literally. As you can see in the video something went wrong and sent the rocket into an immediate horizontal trajectory. At this point the parachutes deployed, but miraculously the rocket was hardly damaged. Only a small two inch tear in the fiberglass coupling tube that was fixed promptly. The cause of failure was likely a combination of the bad weather, the poor stability, and our nosecone tip. The nosecone tip was cut off earlier in the year to make room for an RTD thermocouple and a pressure transducer. It was glued back on and survived just fine at the NASA USLI competition. However a more powerful motor and bit of wobbling was just enough to shear it off, sending us into a wild trajectory. But again, not much damage to the rocket so VCM lives to see another day. No awards though. :-(
Hybrid Rocket Engine Progress
The start of this semester has been very hectic. More press means of course more people want to join up, and it is always exasperated in the Fall semester. In addition we've been pulled everywhere by everybody to do speaking engagements, recruitment, outreach, etc. We're still in the middle of trying to get people settled into the proper groups.
As such, most of our "rocket" progress at the beginning of this semester has been in the propulsion department from our senior members. Jacob Dennis, Steven Shark and myself continue to test our hybrid motor in the desert to try and work out the kinks. So far we've made a lot of progress. Here are just a few video clips from our last test a few weeks back:
YouTube Video: Cold Flow Test of New Swirl Flow Injector (used to test out our new mass flow rate and solenoid activation data acquisition)
Next is a video of the injector in action with Shark's aerospike nozzle. We're still working out a few of the kinks, but this is the first test with some new steel parts added to help our heating problem. Nozzle came out looking pretty good, but we're going to need to switch to a better source for graphite. The end results looks to have a fair amount of pitting.
YouTube Video: Hybrid/Aerospike 09/12/09 Test
We are still having some solenoid valve sticking issues with the nitrous tank. That is to say if we open up the tank and let the feed lines pressurize up to the solenoid, then the heat on the lines will drive the pressure up such that the valve won't open. We've seen this before and the solution is to drive more current through it. We've done just that by using a 30amp battery charger, and it works better, but not perfect. To try and avoid a misfire we're still just opening the tank right before ignition, then running away. We might be soon switching to a more robust solenoid.
The following video shows the hybrid motor using a regular nozzle. This burn was substantially longer than previous burns, and the results came out promising. Isp's in the mid-200s (which is pretty great for N20 and HTPB) and a clean thrust profile.
YouTube Video: Hybrid with regular nozzle 09/21/09 Test
Notice the new test stand additions on those last two videos: an improved axial holding apparatus (with the flexibility to add either small or large diameter motors) and a new end cap to direct the thrust from the motor to the donut load cell. These were machined up by Daedalus members Chris Gay and Randy Odish in the student machine shop and they have already saved us loads of time getting the motor positioned in the thrust stand.
We're still not hitting our expected thrust, but that's because the oxidizer mass flow rate is still too low (0.6 lbs/sec instead of closer to 1 lb/sec), but we will soon be buying a big K-bottle full of N20. It is surprisingly cheap; only $100 for a total refill. Jacob also just placed an order for an improved DAQ: a very nice DATAQ with built in signal conditioners and excitations voltages plus an ethernet port so we can see the data real time on a laptop. We also just put in an order for some custom phenolic from Phenix Tube Corp that should really help the quality of our grains and solve our minor burn-through issue.
Daedalus member Brad Goodman goes to Compete in South Korea
Bradley Goodman, a senior ASU aerospace engineering student, will represent the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) at the International Astronautical Congress Oct. 12-16 in South Korea. Goodman was chosen for the all-expense paid trip after recently winning second place in a research paper and presentation competition at the AIAA Region VI Student Conference. His paper and presentation was entitled "Solid Rocket Propellant Characterization through Crawford Strand Burner Regression Rate Testing." Goodman’s work was inspired by his involvement in Daedalus Astronautics, an ASU student rocketry club. His work was sponsored in part by the Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative (FURI). At the international conference, he’ll compete against winners of other student research paper and presentation awards from around the world. Daedalus Astronautics members Jacob Dennis, Steven Shark and Felipe Hernandez won in the Team Category at the same AIAA Region VI Student Conference for their paper entitled “Design of a N2O/HTPB Hybrid Rocket Motor Utilizing a Toroidal Aerospike Nozzle." They plan to attend the AIAA International Student Conference – held in conjunction with the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting – in January. They will compete against team winners from other AIAA regions. Goodman and the team members worked under James Villarreal, the project manager for Daedalus Astronautics. [original News Bulletin is here under the 9/30/09 date ].
More to come in the weeks ahead...
~ James Villarreal; Project Manager