Project Detail
Rocket Propulsion Lab – Daedalus
Student-built rocket structures, aerodynamic trades, and test instrumentation
UCSD Rocket Propulsion LabStructures Lead10/2024 – 6/2025
Worked within UCSD Rocket Propulsion Lab to design and validate structural components for a student-built rocket targeting a 4,000-ft apogee. The work combined structural design, aerodynamic trade studies, and integrated validation across propulsion and recovery interfaces.
Target
4,000-ft apogee
Focus
Structures, aero stability, integration
Methods
CAD, FEA, OpenRocket, testing
Tools Used
SolidWorksOpenRocketCAD ModelingStructural AnalysisExperimental Testing
Engineering Challenges
- Balancing structural rigidity with weight constraints so the vehicle remained robust without driving unnecessary mass growth.
- Maintaining a stable aerodynamic configuration while accounting for drag, stability margin, and mass distribution shifts.
- Integrating structural components cleanly with propulsion and recovery systems without creating assembly or test bottlenecks.
Design Approach
- Designed load-bearing rocket structures using CAD modeling, interface definition, and tolerance analysis.
- Performed basic FEA in SolidWorks to check stress behavior and identify weak points before fabrication.
- Ran OpenRocket trade studies to compare stability margins, drag coefficients, and center-of-mass sensitivity across configurations.
Validation / Testing
- Supported propulsion and recovery validation with structured instrumentation and data collection during subsystem testing.
- Compared predicted aerodynamic behavior against measured configuration changes to guide iteration before integration.
- Reviewed part interfaces and manufacturability constraints to reduce misalignment risk during assembly.
Results / Impact
- Established a more defensible structural design process linking CAD, FEA, and aerodynamic analysis.
- Improved confidence in the rocket's structural configuration before full-system integration.
- Contributed to a design workflow that treated structures, propulsion, and recovery as coupled engineering problems rather than isolated subsystems.
Next Steps
- Expand structural validation with higher-fidelity load cases and additional test correlation.
- Refine mass accounting and interface tolerance stack-ups earlier in the design cycle.
- Add more automated instrumentation review to improve the feedback loop between test data and design updates.
Project Media
Replace with test footage, CAD renders, GitHub links, or experiment media when available.