Vehicle Design

Overview

SRL’s Vehicle Design Team focuses on the challenges associated with achieving stable, predictable, and reliable flight and recovery. Leveraging advanced in-house flight dynamics tools and other commercially available software, the Vehicle Design team models the dynamics of the full flight profile. Additionally, the vehicle design team works to manufacture and test the avionics bay and recovery systems, ensuring they perform nominally even at the near-vacuum conditions encountered by SRL rockets.

Key Accomplishments

Accurately modeled the flights of Obsidian and Mamba I & III
Successfully recovered Mamba III after descent
Safely conducted the launches of SRL rockets
Characterized deployment charges used in SRL rockets

Simulation

The Vehicle Team utilizes several pieces of software to accurately model the flights of our rockets. These simulations inform the full aerodynamic surface profile of the rocket, including it’s nosecone and fins, as well as thermal protection system choices.

The primary tool that is used is PARADISE, an in-house six-degree-of-freedom monte-carlo simulation, that simulates the flight dynamics of our rockets. These sims are augmented by commercially available rocket design and simulation tools such as OpenRocket and RASAero. CHEESEBURGER, another in-house simulation software, is used to simulated structural loads on our flight vehicles.

Preparation & Launch

The Vehicle Team is also responsible for the preparation and launch of SRL’s rockets. They conduct vital testing of the avionics and vehicle structure to ensure mission success, and might include flight computer range testing, vehicle & parachute deployment testing, and several structural tests. The team also plan out the flight vehicle’s paint scheme with the Operations team.

When the time to launch comes, the Vehicle Team is also responsible for final vehicle integration and operation of the ground stations of various flight computers. They are also responsible for tracking of the flight vehicle during ascent, descent, and recovery.

Vehicle Design Photos & Media