Awards & Nominations

Silver Bang has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

Electromechanical Ejection Systems.

High-Level Project Summary

The ELECTROMECHANICAL actuator we created weighs less than 157 grams each and is made up of High strength steel. The actuator we created pushes the parachute or the payload at the speed of 7mm per second and can withstand 3000kgf force. The actuator can fit inside an airframe which above or equal to 4cm in diameter. The actuator can work in both ways, that is Single deployment and dual deployment. You can deploy both recovery systems and payload. The actuator is a part of a bigger electrical system consisting of an avionics bay. The avionics bay consists of two bulkheads on each side and is made up of PLA. It consists of Arduino Uno and two other sensor which control the deployment altitude.

Link to Project "Demo"

Detailed Project Description

The actuator uses a lead screw mechanism and works on a DC motor powered by a 9v battery. The actuator is placed on the bulkheads of the electronics bay via four nuts and bolts. The avionics bay we created consists of an Arduino Uno and two barometric and accelerometer sensors which actively sense the altitude and the acceleration. The parachute or the payload can be deployed at the apogee or a user-determined altitude. The flow of the ejecting parachute works by Arduino sensing the altitude and the acceleration. We used an '&&' function to determine the apogee. The apogee is detected when the user input value of altitude is greater or equal to the current altitude and the accelerometer is detecting a free fall if any of the above parameters is not true then the actuator will not eject the payload or the parachute. The benefits of using an electromechanical system is that it is much more accurate and better than calculating black powder charge and causes less damage.


Coding languages:

Arduino IDE


Design and Simulation:

Fusion 360


Video for Project

spark.adobe.com

Youtube.com

Space Agency Data

Our project is inspired by the recovery mechanism of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. SLS is one of the most powerful rockets created by the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) and it has been responsible for carrying the Orion spacecraft under NASA's Artemis program. We took inspiration from the recovery system of SLS, which primarily uses a parachute recovery system. As our recovery system was also based on parachute-based recovery mechanisms, we created a miniaturized, non-pyrotechnic, parachute-based rocket recovery system.

Hackathon Journey

We are three-member team. The team is composed of a 9th grader who is an aspiring astrophysicist and is trying to launch his own rocket to space , a college-goer who is pursuing his bachelors degree in Mathematics and an Analytics working professional with interest in Astronomy. Having different age groups from different background brought varied approaches to the table.


First Step: Exploration and decision on challenge: We first took time to explore the challenge we wanted to undertake. Each of us came with the challenge of our liking with a rough approach on how to address the challenge. This was then followed by series of discussion on convincing ourselves which project to pursue.

We then looked at two main factors to pick the challenge for our hackathon 1) which project can be practically completed in two days 2) which project allowed us to use some of our current understandings but explore further.


We concluded on "Let it go!"


Second Step: Tasks and team work: We discussed what interested us as well as areas where two members at time could collaborate to do the following - design, simulation in Fusion 360 and Avionics coding in Arduino.


Third step: Engineering thinking application: We referenced the Systems Engineering Guide from Nasa to decompose the problem


Fourth Step: Requirements and Specs traceability: We made sure that all the requirements are specs are being met


Fifth step: Video Creation and upload to YouTube.

References

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/nasa_systems_engineering_handbook_0.pdf


Challenge Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ke45XZns4o&list=PL37Yhb2zout05pUjr7OoRFpTNroq_wd9f&index=15


https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/CSM12_Earth_Landing_Subsystem_pp93-98.pdf


https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2020/ip_8.html


https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20110016488/downloads/20110016488.pdf


https://llis.nasa.gov/lesson/11501


https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/orion/index.html


https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/index.html

Tags

#Actuators, #engineering, #International, #electromechanical

Global Judging

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.