Hauries d´instal.lar el plug-in del flash... Descarregar plug-in de Flash

Up to date

Projects

Disminuir Aumentar

A student rocket breaks the sound barrier

The Terrassa Team Rocket, made up students of the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), have won the contest for building and launching rockets in Madrid organized by the Technical University of Madrid (UPM). The rocket, named 'Blue Thunder', covered a distance of 1,413 meters at a top speed of 1,468 kph (Mach 1.2) in 12.45 seconds, breaking the sound barrier. It was the first time that a UPC team participates in this category of the competition.

4 may 2010

April 9. Corral de Allyon Airfield, Segovia, Spain. 0900 hours in the morning. It is cold, and the wind was gusting between 30 and 40 kph. Students from the Terrassa Rocket Team of the Higher Technical School and Aeronautics Engineering (ETSEIAT) of the UPC have just finalized the last details of their rocket designed to participate in the category ‘Battle of Rockets’ under the contest called ‘All You Can Fly,’ organized by the Laboratory of Experimentation in Space and Microgravity at the UPM. The team is nervous. All the hard work of past three months will be put to the test in a matter of a few seconds and any single factor, however small, can mean the difference between winning and losing. Finally, the big moment comes. Blue Thunder is placed on the launch pad. Countdown ticks away in the blink of an eye, then ignition and the rocket takes off like a shot into the sky. Everything goes as planned. Upon reaching its highest point, a device deploys the parachute and Blue Thunder lands without complications. The jury looks at the altimeter built into the ETSEIAT rocket and reports that it has traveled a total of 4,062 feet (1,413 meters) in 12.45 seconds, and that it has reached a maximum speed of 1,468 kph, good for 1.2 Mach, fast enough to break the sound barrier. The rocket’s team burst into cheers. None of the competition was been able to do better and as a result  they have won the competition. Mission accomplished.

This is the story of the goal achieved by eight students from ETSEIAT at the UPC with the construction of a rocket that broke the sound barrier. The Blue Thunder is 90 inches long, weighs 700 grams without fuel and 900 with a full tank and can fly 321 Newtons per second. It is built with carbon fiber, aluminum and balsa wood, which is very light and suitable to generate momentum between the fibers of the composites. According to the Terrassa Rocket Team, the secret of the victory in Madrid is "having done a rigorous job with the right calculations always thinking of a rocket which was resistant, lightweight, stable and robust."

The key: aeroelasticity and stability

One of the keys to success was the rocket’s aeroelasticity. A vehicle of this type traveling at very high speeds can experience the phenomenon called flutter, which is the vibration of the structure to the natural frequency amplified from to all the rocket’s fins. Thus, the resonance of the materials affects the rocket and can finally break it into pieces while in flight. Thus, students in the Campus of the UPC in Terrassa reduced the size of the fins and designed the rocket with four fins instead of three, thereby enabling them to reduce the aerodynamic drag, maintain stability and avoid this potentially fatal phenomenon.

The winning team was made up of Guixé Pol, Jaume Creus, Laura Subías, Emiliano Tolosa, Jordi Barrera, Pau Manent, David de la Torre and Bartomeu Maussuti. The project Blue Thunder was made possible thanks to the support of the ETSEIAT INSPIRE3, the association of students EUROAVIA Terrassa and the Department of Thermal Engines of the UPC’s Terrassa Campus.

For its part, the team We CANSAT of the ETSEIAT won third place in the category of ‘CANSAT-Comeback’ of the same competition ‘All You Can Fly.’ The CANSAT members built a device the size of a soda can, which, after a rocket takes off, displays a glider and, thanks to an intelligent system designed by the students, is able to land as close as possible to a target located on the ground. The CANSAT is manufactured with an aluminum and carbon fiber with a fiberglass fuselage to protect the mechanism.

Within this small structure, the device carries the folded wing, accelerometers, barometric altimeter, microcontrollers, an infrared distance detector that detects when the CANSAT is out of the rocket, a lithium polymer battery and a GPS receiver. When CANSAT reaches the maximum height, a deployment device causes the foil to unfurl, and it begins to modify its trajectory through a programmed servomotor. Previously, students had already put in data on expected wind strength, direction and speed.

The We CANSAT team is made up of Adrià Rovira, Enric Figuerola, Albert Arnau, Pol Cirera, Emiliano Tolosa, Jordi Barrera, Aleix Megías, Laia Ramió, Labert Baena, Marta Planas, Ivan Sumelzo, Eloi Ferrer, and Pol Guixé and Dani Abajo. The We CANSAT team of the EUROVIA Association were also supported the program INSPIRE3 ETSEIAT.

Video of the launch and the manufacturing process of the rocket and the CANSAT glider can be viewed on Terrassa Team Rocket’s Facebook page.

Read more





Comments

       
0 comments
 
Global Global Global Global
RSS