Model Rocket Guidance by Canards (4th Year Engineering Project)

I’ve managed to get my final year project to be based on rockets, what’s more a guided rocket! The project has a few key areas: Airframe construction, IMU and simulation/control. I chose to use canards for a few reasons:

  • They can be used over the entire ascent of the rocket not just the motor burn, this should give about 15s to play with.
  • The rocket can be designed to be passively stable and as such can be tested without an active control loop.
  • The control can then be introduced gradually, starting with roll.

The past few weeks I’ve been working intensively on the airframe design and construction. The rocket is made from 4″ tube, is almost 2m tall and weighs in at about 4.5kg.

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3mm Fibreglass for the fins, cut out using a jig saw. It is designed to fly on either a 2 or 3 grain Pro54 motor.20151023_141447[1]

Canard and upper flight computer assembly. The canards are 3D printed out of nylon using an SLS printer. I was hopping there would be sufficient resolution to print the servo splines. However there wasn’t. I think it is possible using the correct type of 3D printer though.