Rocket Development Intern - Waterloo Rocketry (Co-op)
Winter 2020 - Spring 2020
Overview
My role as a Rocket Development Intern for the Waterloo Rocketry team was flexible and allowed me to gain a variety of experiences over different disciplines. I was able to partake in whichever tasks and subteams that I found interesting, allowing me to gain a wealth of experience in mechanical design, electrical fundamentals, and research. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 situation, we were unable to launch our rocket or even proceed with many of the systems designed., however I believe that this position helped me further my engineering knowledge in many areas. At the end of this co-op term I felt as though my biggest takeaway was that being in the Chemical Engineering program should not limit me from exploring my passions in other fields. I felt as though I developed in areas that my peers would not generally have the chance to do, in other more strict co-op positions. Overall, I enjoyed the well-roundedness as an engineer that this opportunity provided me with, and looking back, it was a fundamental experience that laid the groundwork for many projects to come.
Mechanical Work
My most prominent tasks from the mechanical side were the machining of a 5 foot test stand, along with the designing of a fill disconnect hatch.
The test stand was used to hold a hybrid liquid-solid rocket engine that we would use to perform a static fire. This means that the engine would be held in place during ignition to examine its functionality.
To prepare for the test, I primarily used the mill, bandsaw, and drill press to machine the parts to create the stand. Although the static fire was unsuccessful and ended up exploding, the build quality of the stand was assured as there was little damage seen after the test.
The fill disconnect hatch I designed was meant to automatically close once the fill system was removed from the side of the rocket. The main constraints were that it had to automatically close after filling was complete, and that it needed to be flush against the rocket outer wall so aerodynamics were not affected.
To tackle the flush constraint, I took inspiration from fuel doors in cars by creating a custom geometry hinge that would curl in and close the hatch perfectly. Next to automatically close the hatch, I added spring hinges to the design so once the fill system is disconnected, the hatch would swing closed. The design received positive feedback and was set to be machined at a later time.
Test stand for the hybrid engine static fire
Electrical Work
My major electrical tasks included designing a fill sensing PCB in KICAD and electrical assembly for the remote launch control system (RLCS).
This purpose of creating this PCB was to familiarize myself with KICAD and to gain experience making schematics and footprints. I was able to learn many standard practices when creating the schematic, and eventually applied these skills in my other projects.
Assembling the RLCS system taught me a lot about good wiring practices and soldering minor components onto PCBS. It also showed me the importance of testing the system constantly to ensure that the connections were all stable, so the whole system would not have to be disassembled for future maintenance.
Remote launch control system
Research
My first research task for this position was the creation of a payload (or scientific experiment) that would run while the rocket is at high altitudes. Our team determined that imaging cosmic rays would be a good choice for the payload, since the photos taken, or amount of rays detected, could be used for dark matter research.
The particles that would be mainly examined are muons, which generally hit the Earth from particles in the atmosphere hitting cosmic rays. Since these particles last for an extremely short amount of time and are scarce to image on Earth, detecting high concentrations of them at greater altitudes would prove helpful for research. From my findings, I determined that the most effective way to proceed would be to use CCD or CMOS sensors, connected to a recording device so we could see the fluctuations in muon concentration over the flight path.