Altitude-Limiting Airbrake System for Small to Medium Scale Rockets

The goal of the overall internship opportunity this semester was to learn and practice the elements of engineering design through direct exposure to real engineering problems. The primary exposure was to design and manufacture an airbrake device for use with small-medium scale rocket applications. The idea was to take the presented concept of a solution and transform said concept into a reliable fully-functioning and reusable mechanism. The mechanism was to be designed as an insurance feature so that the overall altitude of a rocket with relatively undetermined engine capabilities does not unexpectedly exceed the imposed 10,000 foot ceiling, per range requirements. The airbrake concept was introduced to the Prototype Development Lab as a rotation-driven four tiered offset track pin mechanism, i.e. the airbrake was deployed by rotating a central shaft attached directly to the bottom plate. The individual airbrake fins were subsequently deployed using multiple plates with tracks of offset curvature. The fins were created with guide pins to follow the tracks in each of the offset plates, thus allowing the simultaneous rotational deployment of all fins by only rotating one plate. The concept of this solution was great; though it did not function in application. The rotating plates alone brought up problems like the entire back half of the rocket rotating according to the motion of the aforementioned base plate. Subsequently, the solution currently under development became a static linear actuator-driven spring-loaded fin release system. This solution is almost instantaneously triggered electronically when the avionics detect that the rocket has reached the calculated altitude of deceleration. This altitude will allow enough time remaining to the overall ceiling to adequately decelerate the rocket prior to reaching the ceiling.