Art's Personal Website
IREC 2023: Pegasus
- Pioneered a novel fuel grain composition.
- Solved emulsification problems between fuel grain ingredients.
- Developed an modular injector plate, allowing for quick refurbishment in case of damage.
- Generated manufacturing procedures to guarantee repeatability and uniformity between fuel grain batches.
- Successfully static fired twice, both times gaining N-class impulse classification, outperforming previous generations by 60% in peak thrust.
My First Hybrid Rocket!
Project Pegasus was UCF's entry into IREC 2023. Taking major lessons from the 2022 entry, Pegasus aimed to incorporate features such as a fully composite airframe, an external oxidizer tank, and fully controllable oxidizer plumnbing. My role began as the combustion lead, overseeing the design of the fuel grain and the selection of its ingredients with performance, price, and manufacturability in mind. Later on, the team was restructured, and my role transitioned to overseeing the testing campaign, handling procurement and integration, and developing the testing procedures necessary to reliably and repeatably ignite the engine for a full duration burn. After two static fires, Pegasus went on to compete among 12 international teams in the hybrid category. Although we were unsuccessful in launching in New Mexico, the team participated in the conference, where we received feedback and judging based on the technical merit of our design.
A couple of months later, we got to launch Pegasus at the Tripoli Tampa launch site in November of 2023. An anomaly occured at around two seconds into the flight, which effectively terminated the engine thrust. It achieved an apogee of 4000ft out of the design 10000ft. Despite this failure, this project allowed the team to get extensive experience in designing, manufacturing, testing, and launching large scale hybrid rockets, and served as a major foundation for Project Helios.
