FLUID MECHANICS

CASE REPORT
WATER ROCKET

DRAGOS VASILE MITROFAN & DAVID OGDEN

5/7/2012

FLUID MECHANICS WATER ROCKET CASE REPORT Teacher: Jens Brusgaard Vestergaard

I. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS, PHYSICAL, THERMODYNAMIC AND FLUID DYNAMIC PROCESSES ACTING ON THE WATER ROCKET
A water rocket is a type of model rocket using water as its reaction mass. The pressure vessel in our case the PET container is the engine of the rocket. The water inside is forced out by a pressurized gas, typically compressed air. which force the water inside the container throughout the nozzle. In our case the water acts as a fuel... This type of model demonstrate the working principles of Newton`s third Law. In this report the water rocket is subjected to a 600 kPa pressure and we want to see what is the maximum altitude that can reach considering also different parameters like nozzle diameter, water content, pressure loss etc... Basic principle of reaction of a jet Whenever the momentum of a stream of fluid is increased in a given direction in passing from one section to another, there must be a net force acting on the fluid in that direction and by the Newton`s third law there will be an equal and opposite force exerted by the fluid on the system which is producing the change of momentum. In order to start calculate first we have to make a FBD(free body diagram ) of the water rocket with all the forces that are acting on our model

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FLUID MECHANICS WATER ROCKET CASE REPORT Teacher: Jens Brusgaard Vestergaard

II. MATHEMATICAL FORMULATION OF THE PROCESSES

Knowing all the forces that are present we can start formulate a mathematical model of our rocket starting with the expelled water throughout the nozzle by using Bernoulli`s equation on the surface of contact between water and air and the surface at the end of the nozzle

1 +
where

1 1 2 2 1 + 1 = 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 2

2 = ( + 1 + 2 ) 2 2

and

=
2

1
2.51 2

v1 = Speed of water inside the bottle (v1 0) v2 = Exhaust velocity of water P1 = Air pressure inside the bottle P2 = Pressure at the end of the nozzle (Atmospheric pressure) h1 = h2= Altitude of points 1 and 2 f = Friction factor from Moody`s Diagram W = Density of water ( 1000 kg/m3) L = length of the nozzle d = internal Diameter of nozzle = Secondary looses according to the local water speed

Based on these formulas the expelled water speed v2 can be calculated as a function of the pressure inside the bottle

2 =

21 1 + +

Now that we found V2 we can calculate the mass flow of air:

= 2
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FLUID MECHANICS WATER ROCKET CASE REPORT Teacher: Jens Brusgaard Vestergaard

Having the mass flow now we can start working on the variation of water per time unit :

=
t = time step

From this we can deduce that mass of the water per time unit is:

=
Mwi = Initial mass of water Mw = Mass of the water per time unit

Total mass of the rocket is

= +
Next step is to calculate the variation of air per time unit:

= =

By having the volume of air variation we can calculate the new volume of air in the bottle

= 0 +
0 - initial volume

We know that inside the bottle there is a pressure of 600 kPa and when lunched there will be a pressure drop so these means that we will have a variation of the pressure. We can calculate this with the relation between pressure and volume:
0 0 = 1 1

V0 = Initial volume of air V1 = Volume per time unit P0 = Initial pressure of air P1 = Pressure of air per time unit

and we have a K value and this is equal with 1.4.

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FLUID MECHANICS WATER ROCKET CASE REPORT Teacher: Jens Brusgaard Vestergaard
Having all the masses and the pressure forces now we can start working on the Technical parameters such as : Thrust, Speed, Acceleration and the Altitude The thrust is given by the force of the running water at the nozzle

=
vR = Speed of rocket per time unit

Also there are other 2 forces present : the Drag force and the gravity and they are expressed as follow

1 2

g = Gravity force (g = 9.82 m/s2) Abottle = Area of bottle section CD = Coefficient of drag of the bottle air = Density of air ( 1.25 kg/m3)

Now we can find the Force acting on the rocket

aR = Acceleration of the rocket

We also know that the speed is variable so we have a variable speed at a certain time (v):

= 0 +
V0R = Initial rocket speed

where

Knowing the Thrust and speed we can start calculating the height that the rocket can reach:

= 0 +

where

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FLUID MECHANICS WATER ROCKET CASE REPORT Teacher: Jens Brusgaard Vestergaard

III. WIND TUNNEL MEASUREMENTS

By the use of wind tunnel we can find out what is the Drag Coefficient for our bottle we can also use the following graphic( FLUID mechanics 1 semester) for rapid approximation of the Drag coefficient and it s around Cd = 0.5

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FLUID MECHANICS WATER ROCKET CASE REPORT Teacher: Jens Brusgaard Vestergaard

IV. CARRY OUT A SIMULATION USING EXCEL AND EULERS METHOD

(the Excel file is attached to this report)

By the use of Microsoft Excel we have carried out a simulation of all the mathematical formulas written above and we came with the following conclusion: For this experiment, the water rocket consisted of a recycled 2 litre plastic bottle, fitted with a 9 mm nozzle in its lid. The bottle was filled up with 1litre of water, placed onto a rig and attached to a container of compressed air. The compressed air created high pressure around 600 [kPa] in the bottle, and when the bottle was disconnected from the air and released from the rig, the air pressure forced the water through the nozzle to create a water jet, and propel the bottle vertically. The bottle was propelled to around 23.814 metres high, before it ran out of water. The bottle was highly unstable throughout its flight, before falling back to the ground.

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