1. LV3: Open-hardware Carbon Fiber Rocket
Joe Shields
Leslie Elwood
Erik Nelson
Jacob East
Brandon Bonner

2. Mission Statement Design, fabricate, and document
two lightweight rocket airframes
using the 2014 capstone team’s processes... and cry

3. Presentation Overview
Deliverables
Review
Results
Discussion & questions

4. Updated Project Schedule
Task
Date
Purchase / Acquire material
2/19
Machine coupling rings
3/4
First CF pieces fully cured
Fin frames machined
5/20
Nose cone
6/17
Airframe modules complete (4 of 4)
Fin cans complete (1 of 2)
6/10
Documentation (On Schedule)
6/6
AIAA paper
8/1

5. Project Budget PSAS budget $1,500
Beta Project budget (nosecone only) $1,000
Everything else donation based ~$100,000

6. Rocket Parts

7. Nose Module
Female mold cut out of machinable foam (Machine time donated by ESCO Corp.)
Layup inside of mold instead of outside a mandrel. Halves joined by second layer of CF.
2 halves co-molded with coupling ring during joining layup

8. With Exterior Adhesive Without Exterior Adhesive
Airframe Modules
With Exterior Adhesive Without Exterior Adhesive
Advantages:
Improved surface finish
Improved structural strength
Disadvantage:
Use of expensive/difficult to obtain adhesive film
Is not the industry standard
Advantages:
Minimal weight/material use
More aligned with composite standards.
Disadvantage:
Weaker
Cells are not 100% wetted with epoxy.

9. Airframe Modules: MFG Layer order: vacuum bag release film shrink tape
adhesive*
carbon fiber
adhesive
honeycomb
aluminum mandrel

10. Fin Frames
Machine Science Corp. donated all the material and machine time for our coupling rings and fin frames
Fin frames provide solid structure for stability and to reduce flutter

11. Documentation
3 different documents:
Capstone Report
PSAS Report
AIAA

12. Material Acquisition
Very difficult to build a rocket on a capstone budget
Spent weeks soliciting for donations
Donating companies
Pacific Coast Composites
Machine Sciences Corporation
Boeing
Esco

13. Pacific Coast Composites
Found PCC, based out of Lakewood
Donated ~$20,000 of material
Carbon Fiber
Adhesive
Fiberglass

14. Machine Sciences Corporation
Based out of Wilsonville
Cutting edge machine shop
Donated:
materials
machine time
technical advice

15. Machine Sciences Corporation
Fin frames:
metal leading edge
rigid
anti-flutter
Challenging to machine within necessary tolerance
Coupling rings
connect modules

16. Boeing Donated ~$60,000 worth of material from Auburn facility
Carbon fiber
Adhesive
Vacuum bagging material
Fiberglass

17. Re-donation to WSU/OSU
Got more material from Boeing than we could store
Donated to WSU rocket club and OSU Dynamic Robotics Lab (approx $18,000)
Helped VMS capstone make CF muffler enclosure

18. Generations of Layups

19. Testing Compression Test Results Brittle failure at 10 000 lbf
Pinging (like yield) at lbf

20. Testing Surface roughness results
8 thou feature size for black modules
0.15 thou feature size for blue, sanded modules
Drag analysis pending

21. Results
3 complete fins were bonded to 1 of our 2 flight ready motor modules (24”)
Required documentation is on schedule for completion by deadline
Nose module mold is assembled waiting to be machined and is on track for completion before launch date

22. Questions