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Rocket Report




C.P. Anderson
Mr. Hendricks
Academy for Math, Engineering, and Science
Jan 15-27, 2014


Abstract
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This report consisted of four small labs, about rockets and their flight, compressed into
one extended lab. The purpose of these experiments was to learn about the different factors that
go into building, designing, predicting the flight, and the actual launch of a rocket. The four
experiments were a thrust analysis, finding the drag coefficient of the rocket, predicting the
height, and the actually launching them and measuring their actual heights.

Introduction
The first experiment in this experiment dealt with finding the thrust of an unknown
rocket, and then determining what type of rocket it was based off that information. In this
experiment three types of rocket engines are mention, an A, B, and C. The differences between
these rocket are the impulse, which is the force exerted multiplied by the time, given off by them.
The impulse of an A engine is 2.5, a B is 5, a C 10, and so on The second experiment dealt
with the drag force acting on a rocket, and the drag coefficient of the rocket. The drag force on
the rocket is the force that is exerted on the rocket due to air resistance, and the drag coefficient
is a number that is needed for the drag force equation that had to be determined through testing.
The third experiment dealt with predicting the heights of the rockets that would be launched later
in the experiments. To do this numerical iteration was used. Numerical iteration is where it is
assumed that, in this case, the force remains constant over a period of time. In these experiments
it can be used since such a small time window was being measured at any one time. The final
experiment was the actual launching of the rockets, and the measurement of their actual height
compared to their predicted height. Another equation also used in these experiments is the
impulse momentum theory, this states that the change of momentum of an object equals the
impulse applied to it.

Thrust
This experiment was started by being given a rocket, whose type was unknown, by Mr.
Hendricks. The goal of this experiment was to find the thrust of the mystery rocket by doing
some real world test, but the experiment needed to be set up before it could begin. This is what
the set up looked like when completed.
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In this setup there is a cart, number 3, that the rocket is attached to. This cart is held onto a track
by a ring of duct tape, non sticky on the inside, and is resting against a digital force gauge,
number 2, that measures pushing and pulling forces. This D.F.G. Is hooked up to a calculator
where the force data is recorded.

Before the test was run with a rocket, a test of the test was done where a person pushed
on the gauge. During the pre-test, and the actual test, the program easy data was used to record
the information from the digital force gauge. Before the pre-test was begun the gauge first
needed to be zeroed, to make sure it recorded accurate data, and the time graph of the data
needed to be set up. The decision for the time graph was to record a data point every tenth of a
second, and to record 100 data points, resulting in a test of 10 second.

A trigger then needed to be set to start the actual recording of the data. A trigger is a
setting, so that when the force exceeds a certain threshold, the calculator starts recording data to
graph. It was decided that the trigger would be set off when the force went below one newton.
This might seem strange, but the digital force gauge measures a pulling force as positive, so the
pushing force, what was being measured in this experiment, would come out as a negative value.
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Lastly a trigger pre-store needed to be set. This is a setting where once the trigger is
triggered the calculator save the last percentage, that you set, of data points from the buffer, that
is constantly being replaced. The pre-store for this experiment was set as the last 10% of the
buffer.

The setup was moved outside since explosives were being used. The set up was a little bit
different than before though. Now the rocket was set up to be launched. The rocket was put in
place and an igniter was placed in the rocket.





An igniter is a set of wires separated by a piece of tape connected at one end to phosphorus. (the
piece coming out of the end of the rocket)

The igniter was put into the end of the rocket and kept in place by a plug. This was then hooked
up to a battery with alligator clips, to control when the rocket would go off.

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the video (Link on back page: #1) is of the experiment taking place. A countdown
commences, the battery is turned on igniting the phosphorus, which then ignites the rocket. The
rocket works by being started by the igniter which starts the first fast burning fuel source which
gives the rocket it's actual power, followed by a slow burning plug, and then another fast burning
fuel source that launches the chute.

After the rocket was done launching the data that was collected was graphed. To find what type
of rocket it was the area under the graph was measured using both left and right endpoint
rectangles. The area was found both times to be 6.769. This answer is closest to B rocket.

Drag force (air resistance)
The purpose of this section was to find the drag constant for the rockets that was
launched later during this continued lab. The drag constant is a missing part of the equation of
drag force, k in the equation F=kv^2, that changes based on shape and contact area. This
constant needed to be calculated to accurately predict the flight of a rocket by accounting for air
resistance.

To find this a small scale controlled test needed to be done, and luckily Mr. Hendricks
had all the tools needed to do just this. The most important piece of equipment used in this
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experiment was the wind tunnel.
The wind tunnel works by having a fan on the right side (from the view that you see it in
the picture) that pulls in air from the left, and then goes back out the right end. The internal
structure of the wind tunnel looks like this.
What you see is a very poorly drawn, cross section of the tunnel.

Number 1 is the test chamber. The clear area in the middle of the tunnel in the picture. Number
two is the fan that pulls the air through. You may be wondering what the lines on either side of
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the test chamber are. These are called honeycomb material. They look like this.


These simple tubes do a very important job in the wind tunnel. They
channel the air so that there isn't any turbulence and create laminar flow,
which is the opposite of turbulence. You've probably heard that work used
before, turbulence, but some people might not know what it actually means.
Turbulence is when air is flowing all different directions causing a mixed
jumble of air flows. When a plane, or, in the case of this experiment, the
model rocket goes through turbulence it bumps them around. In the
experiment this would be a problem because what was needed could not
accurately measured.
The other pieces of equipment used in this experiment were a model rocket with a mass
of 61 grams, and a protractor. (Pictured here)

The basic setup of the experiment is that the rocket is hanging from the top of the wind
tunnel in the test chamber, with a protractor on the far wall behind it so that the string connecting
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the rocket hangs over 90 degrees.

To begin the experiment a way to find the force acting on the rocket was needed, and to
do this it needed to be drawn out. (This is the drawing and free body diagram that was drawn to
illustrate this experiment)

In this drawing a Ping pong ball to show where the rocket would be. In the diagram the
ball is being blown by the airflow coming from the left, and forms some angle to the right of
where it would be without air flow, and this is the piece of information that is needed to solve for
the force of drag, and then the drag constant. It would have been easy to calculate the force of
drag if the electronic force gauge in the tunnel, that the rocket was supposed to be attached to,
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had been working, but since it was broken, but this was looked upon as a challenge and an
opportunity to learn, instead of a dead end.
To do this a free body diagram was needed, which had already been drawn, and the
forces needed to be de funkified. The force of drag and mg are okay as they are but the tension
force needed to be fixed. This is done just like any other force by breaking it down into its
components, Tcos and Tsin. The next step is to then add together the forces acting in the x
direction and the forces acting in the y direction. A problem was discovered when the forces in
the x direction were looked at, two unknowns, one equation. Equation for forces in x direction:
Fx= Fd - Tsin=O The forces in the y direction were then summed up to find an equation for
T. Fy= -mg + Tcos This equation was then rearranged it to get T by itself T = (mg)/(cos) the
next step was to plug that back into the force in the x equation and get Fd = (mg/cos)(sin) this
equation then simplifies to Fd = mg(tan)
Now it was time to start the actual experiment. When the experiment began the first thing
needed was the value of (theta), to do this someone needed to look at the string and protractor to
figure out what the value was. When the student read the angle they said it was 120 degrees. This
wasn't the actual value of . It was actually 30 degrees (30 degrees past 90 is 120) that was all
the information needed to solve for the force of drag. When the numbers were plugged in the
resulting answer was
Fd = (.061)(9.8)tan(30) once solved it was found that Fd was equal to .345139, but Fd
wasn't the final goal, the drag constant was what was trying to be determined.
what was needed was the equation that that was found that was mentioned in the
beginning, Fd = Kd v^2 but one part of the equation was still needed, the velocity of the rocket.
Since the rocket is stationary relative to the ground the airspeed is needed to find the speed of the
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rocket relative to the air. There was only one problem with this, there was no way to measure the
speed of the air, so Mr. Hendricks provided the speed of the air in the tunnel, which he had
measured before with a sailing tool. He told us that the speed was 15 meters per second. Now it
was no longer a physics problem it was just a math problem. The numbers were plugged in:
.345139 = Kd 15^2 then Kd was isolated: Kd = .345139/15^2 and found it to equal
0.001533955.
This number was a bit off. The class decided only one sig fig could be used since
themeasurement of was not very precise. So the constant for that rocket was rounded to 0.001,
but that constant was just for that rocket, in the test, and the rockets that would be launched in
the actual experiment had the same basic shape but a different contact area. One of them was
bigger so the constant was rounded up to 0.002 to account for the increased size and the other is
smaller so it was rounded down to 0.001 to account for the decreased size.


Numerical models
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The purpose of this section of the experiment was to numerically calculate predicted
values for the heights that the rockets will fly, when they are launched. To do this Mr. Hendricks
provided an excel spreadsheet that can calculate the height, by having the user put in the mass of
the rocket, the drag coefficient of the rocket, and the thrust of the rocket every tenth of a second.
The excel spread sheet made figuring out the height easy by just inputting numbers in,
but the knowledge of how to do it by hand is still important.
This picture shows the excel spread sheet that was used, but without any numbers put in
for the mass of the rocket or the drag coefficient.
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The first step to using this excel spreadsheet is to input the mass of the rocket, and the
fuel spice, and inputting the drag coefficient of the rocket.
The second step is to copy the values for thrust into the thrust column. These values were
given by the manufacturer of the rocket engines that will be used, and cannot be calculated
without physically testing it.
After those values are imputed the excel spreadsheet goes to work. It does all the math
for you and displays the height, at that time, in the second to the right column.
Each column has a different formula that it does.
The second column gives the drag force acting on the rocket. It does this by taking the
drag coefficient, Kd, and multiplying it by the previous velocity squared.
The third column gives the average net force. The equation that these cells use is average
thrust minus the force of gravity minus the drag force.
The fourth column gives the average net impulse.
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The fifth column displays the initial velocity by taking the previous rows final velocity,
and putting it into the initial velocity cell.
The sixth gives us the final velocity of the rocket after the tenth of a second time period.
It uses the equation vi + FnetDt/m.
The seventh column calculates the average velocity by adding the initial and final
velocities and then dividing that number by two.
The seventh column gives us the initial height, which is the previous rows final height.
The final column gives us the final height by using the equation. Hf = Hi + Vavg*Dt
Once all these calculations are automatically done in the spreadsheet the max height
needs to be found. This is done by scrolling down the spreadsheet, and looking for the largest
number in the final height column. Once found that is the prediction for the final height.
Another small part of this experiment was to see how much air resistance affected the
height of the rocket. To do this the final height was first calculated with the drag coefficient.
Then it was calculated with a drag coefficient of zero. What was found when these two numbers
were compared was that with the drag coefficient the rocket would go about 60 meters in the air,
but with out the drag coefficient the rocket reached upwards of 300 - 400 meters.

Launch Day
The purpose of the experiment today was to put together everything that had previously
done to see if the predictions of the height of the rockets matched the actual height that was
measured.
The experiment began by setting up a launch pad outside for the rockets, and finding a way to
measure the height of the rockets. It was decided that three people with protractors would be
used to measure the angles. Three people were needed because the curve of the rocket needed to
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be accounted for and one person measuring would not be accurate.

Once launched, the three people measured the angle of the rocket above their eye level.
To figure out the final height a triangle was created. The height will be equal to the y component
of the triangle added to the eye level of the person, which was averaged to be 1.45 meters. Since
there were three measurements for , to get an actual measurement the average tangent of was
needed to get the actual height.
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(drawing of one persons triangle)
Once the rockets were launched and the angles were measured and the actual heights
were calculated.
The calculated heights of the rockets are listed in the conclusion.
(Video number 2 on back page shows the rocket launches and also displays the predicted
and actual values)





Conclusion
Predictions compared to actual heights
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Rocket Engine type Predicted Height Actual height
Big White C 63 meters 63 meters
Red and Silver C 63 meters 85 meters
Red and Yellow C 97 meters 91 meters
Red and Black C 62 meters unknown
Baby Rocket A 23 meters 45 meters

Some of these values for the actual height compared to the predicted are very surprising,
such as the numbers for the big white engine, due to the accuracy when the height was measured.
The problem that was encountered while measuring the heights of the rockets was the curve of
the flight of the rocket. Such as with the Red and Black rocket, the height is unknown since the
path was too curved to be accurately measured. The way to fix this problem would be if an
electronic altimeter had been attached to the rockets. This device measures the air pressure to
figure out the height of the rockets flight.

Reflection
This lab was a very interesting experience. Ive grown up my entire life being fascinated
by stories from my grandfather about designing missiles and working on part for the space
shuttle, and rockets. These stories are what first sparked my interest in engineering, and what
made me love this project more than any other experiments Ive done in the past. Not only was
this a fun experiment, but it also was full of learning experiences. It set in stone what I had
previously learned in physics, and taught me more about real world testing.


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Video Links
Video 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuDKPE8poHU

Video 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYy9p8i7s7o