In my Senior year at WPI I again served as HPRC's rocket division lead, this time leading vehicle design for the team's first entry into the Spaceport America Cup, the world's largest intercollegiate rocketry competition. The team competed in the 10k COTS category with Altair, a 11 ft tall, 6" diameter vehicle.

The vehicle featured redesigned airbrakes, a new tip-to-tip layup construction for the fin can, and a custom fiberglass tailcone. A major new feature of the vehicle is the couplings, aluminium airframe joints that operate similarly to a garden hose connector which significantly speed up vehicle assembly. The couplings also feature flanges that allow internal systems to be easily mounted. The modularity offered by the system is also a major benefit over traditional coupler tubes.

As rocket division lead I was responsible for managing the 5 subteam leads and ther overall schedule. I defined the technical projects approached by the team as well as the requirements for the systems, and was responsible for the system level design and integration. On the technical side, I developed the concepts for the couplings and airbrakes, contributed to the testing of the single end deployment system, and supervised all composites manufacturing. I also contributed significantly to the design of the airbrake control system.

The team successfully made it to launch week in its rookie year, however the vehicle broke up at burnout due to an incorrectly configured altimeter. I lead the failure analysis process to identify the root cause and develop recommendations to mitigate the chance of similar failures. Despite the failure, the team placed well and earned the Sportmanship Award.

As a part of this project, I used and developed my skills in engineering design, DFM/DFA, SOLIDWORKS, finite element analysis, additive manufacturing, CNC machining, composite analysis and manufacturing, electronics design and assembly, control system design, and MATLAB programming

• Project Page
• Technical Report
• Failure Investigation Report