Beanboozler at the LDRS 40 rocket launch. Credit Tahoma Photography
Summary
Beanboozler (named after an in-joke) was designed to test the custom rocket avionics suite designed by AerospaceNU in flight regimes close to those they'll experience when controlling our eventual liquid-fueled rocket. I lead the design and fabrication, helped by a small group of teammates.
The mechanical design of this 2.6in fiberglass rocket was pushed my rocket construction skills. It is my first fiberglass airframe rocket, was my first to fly on an L-class rocket motor, and my first rocket to fly supersonic. A flight at Lucerne Lake in CA summer of 2022 achieved an apogee of 15,584ft and a speed of Mach 1.05 on a L265-mellow rocket motor (pictured above).
The avionics bay holds a custom flight computer with GPS and radio telemetry, as well as a redundant commercial altimeter. The nosecone contains an additional redundant GPS tracker, as well as a sensor suite including pitot tube to measure rocket velocity, thermocouples to measure aerodynamic heating, as well as IMUs and barometers. The rocket's small size presented unique fabrication and packaging challenges as we balanced battery capacity and telemetry radio placement with design loading constraints.
Flight Log
Fight 1 was on April 23, 2022 on an I-class motor to 4700ft, at MDRA rocketry club. Flight was a success, though light leakage through the translucent fiberglass introduced errors in the barometer sensors. Future flights used blackout paint on the electronics bay to mitigate this.
Flight 2 flew at LDRS 40 on June 11, 2022 to 15,500ft on an L265 motor. A loose groundstation antenna connection lead to a loss of primary telemetry, and the rocket was recovered using the redundant GPS tracker ~2 miles from the launch site. The rocket was successfully recovered, though the booster shock cord was damaged from chafing against the fiberglass lip. Future flights implemented a tubular kevlar overwrap to prevent chafing.
Above: Fins during and after epoxying
The avionics bay went through multiple iterations in Solidworks, evolving from a 3d-printed brick to a sled-based construction as seen above
Above: Nosecone electronics bay CAD mockup, showing the GPS, batteries and data acquisition PCB (green)
OpenRocket CAD design
Photos above are from LDRS 40 on 6/11/2022.
The rocket ejection system (black powder charges ignited with electric matches) was ground tested to ensure the rocket would properly seperate in flight. The videos below show the drogue (lower) and main (upper) bays successfully separating with 0.2 and 0.4 grams of black powder.
Simulation on an L1000, the largest motor this could fly on.
