GVC-22 Omega Project 2005
Team Handbook
Version 1.2
November 15, 2004
Omega Project an international collaboration to successfully design, build, and
launch a 2 liter water rocket with a payload of one raw egg into the air and
return it to the Earth without any damage. The team that successfully keeps the
egg in the air the longest will be The Omega Project champions.
INTRODUCTION
The Team Omega Project provides students, working in teams the way aerospace
engineers do, a realistic experience in designing a flying aerospace vehicle
that meets a specified set of mission and performance requirements. It is not
intended to be easy, but it is well within the capabilities of middle and high
school students with a good background in science and math and some
craftsmanship skills.
The purpose of the Omega Project is to design and build a safe and stable water
rocket vehicle and use it to lift a fragile payload (one raw hen's eggs) into
the air and keep it aloft for as long as possible, then return this payload
safely and undamaged.
The water rockets must be made form a 2 liter plastic bottle, the kind used
for carbonated drinks.
Times will be determined by two observers on the ground with electronic
stopwatches, who time from the moment of liftoff until the moment the egg lands.
The winning team will be the team whose egg payload stays in the air the
longest, and returns the egg undamaged
The team with the longest total time amongst the three different countries
will be the champions.
The Team Handbook provides the Omega Project rules plus some guidelines on how
to approach the process of rocket design and flying. It also provides
information on additional sources of information on general model rocket design,
construction, and flying. The challenge and the learning for each team comes
from developing and testing their own completely original design.
Teams should begin the Challenge by becoming familiar with the basics of model
rocketry. Those who have no experience with how these models are built and flown
should begin by reading The Water Rocket Book available online
http://bradcalv.customer.netspace.net.au/wrbook.htm .
Omega Project 2005 EVENT RULES.
1. SAFETY.
All rockets must be built and flown in accordance with the Omega Project
Safety Code.
All rockets will be inspected before launch and observed during flight by a
teacher, whose judgment on their compliance with the Safety Code and with these
rules will be final.
Teams are encouraged to consult with Omega Project teachers who are running
this event well before the fly-off to resolve any questions about design or
flight safety, about the Safety Code, or about these rules.
2. TEAMS.
Team members must be students who are currently enrolled in the GVC-22
project.
Each team will be made up of one group of students form each of the three
schools. (Group size should be no larger than 5 members and team size no larger
than 15.)
Each country group will assign a leader; each team will have 3 leaders whose
job it will be to coordinate communication and design among all other team
members.
Each student member must make a significant contribution to the designing,
building, and/or launching of the team's entry; no part of any of these may be
done by any adult, by a company (except by the sale of standard off-the-shelf
components, but not kits or designs for the event), or by any person not a
student on that team.
No student may be on more than one team.
Team members cannot change teams after the first test flight.
3. ROCKET REQUIREMENTS.
Rockets must be constructed of plastic 2 liter carbonated drink bottles.
Other bottles for non-carbonated drinks may not be built to withstand the high
pressure applied to the bottle. No glass.
They may not be commercially-made kits designed to carry egg payloads.
They must be powered only by water and air.
Maximum pressure for launching will be no more than 100psi. (pounds per
square inch.)
4. PAYLOAD.
Rockets must contain and completely enclose one raw large hen's egg of 57 to
63 grams weight and a diameter of 45 millimeters or less, and must return these
from the flight without any cracks or other external damage.
Eggs are issued to the team by the teacher during flight testing; teams must
provide their own eggs for their qualifying flights.
A hard boiled egg can be used for all test flights; only the final fly-off
egg will be raw.
The egg does not have to remain with the rocket during the entire flight
The egg must land at the end of their flight without human intervention
(catching) and the team will be disqualified if there is such intervention.
The eggs must be removed from the rocket at the end of the flight in the
presence of a designated Omega Project teacher and presented to that official,
who will inspect them for damage. Any external damage to the egg will disqualify
the attempt.
5. DURATION SCORING.
Scores shall be based on total flight duration of the portion of the rocket
containing the egg, measured from first motion at liftoff from the launch pad
until the moment of landing.
Times must be measured independently by two people not on the team, one of
whom is the official Omega Project observer, using separate electronic
stopwatches accurate to 0.01 seconds.
The official duration will be the average of the two times, rounded to the
nearest 0.1 second. If one stopwatch malfunctions, the remaining single time
will be used.
6. FLIGHTS.
Team members cannot be changed after the first test flight.
Only two flights are allowed per team at the final fly-off, except as
specifically noted in these rules.
In order to be eligible for the fly-off, a team is required to fly a
qualifying flight observed in person by the team teacher.
Each team may conduct as many test flight as the want. (Keep in mind that
the high pressure on the rocket will eventually require you to use a new 2 liter
bottle. It is highly recommended that you design your rocket in such a way that
the nosecone and fins can be easily removed or remade.)
A rocket that departs the launch pad under rocket power is considered to
have made a flight.
If a rocket experiences a rare "catastrophic" malfunction (it explodes on
the launch pad) a replacement flight may be made, with a replacement vehicle if
necessary.
The date of the fly-off has yet to be determined. It will sometime in March.
7. SAFE RECOVERY.
Each part of the rocket, including each stage, must either contain a
recovery device or be designed to glide, tumble unstably, or otherwise return to
earth at a velocity that presents no hazard.
Any entry which has a major part land without a recovery system at a
velocity that is judged by the teacher to be hazardous, due to recovery system
absence, insufficiency, or malfunction, will be disqualified.
8. LAUNCH SYSTEMS.
All launches will be controlled by the teacher and must occur from the
ground.
Each team will use the same launch system provided by the teacher or teacher
representative.
Maximum launch pressure inside the bottle at launch is not to exceed 100 psi.
9. PLACES.
Places in the competition will be determined on the basis of how long the
egg stayed in the air.
Ties will result in sharing the honor for the affected place(s)
The total time of each team will be the combined time form all successful
launches from each country.
FLIGHT VEHICLE DESIGN
Because of the size of the payload (the large hen's egg will weigh 57 to 63
grams), the mass of the water and the altitude required in order for the rocket
to achieve a flight, rockets entered in the Omega Project will be fairly large
and heavy. The minimum liftoff weight is probably about 350-450grams.
Designing a rocket that will stay up for a long time is not particularly hard to
do, although designing one that cushions and protects one egg is a bit harder.
The Challenge is finding the exact combination of airframe design, fins, nozzle
diameter, and the duration-control technique, which will achieve the greatest
time in the air for the egg. Doing this will require either lots of
trial-and-error (not recommended), or use of a rocket-design and
flight-simulation computer program to get the design roughly right. Modern
aerospace engineers do lots of "flight tests" on a computer before they start
building and flying hardware--it's quicker and cheaper! (Note: many of the
software programs are designed for model rockets that use solid fuel engines. A
careful team who uses their imagination can also use these programs to help
reduce the time needed to develop their water rockets. Many of the factors that
affect flight of a model rocket will apply to your water rocket.)
How do you approach the process of designing a flight vehicle? Engineers start
with what is a fixed, given quantity -- such as the size and shape of the egg
payload and its cushioning -- and with what the mission performance requirements
are. In this case the requirement is to stay up in the air for as long as
possible and make a safe return to earth at the end. No matter what your design,
it must incorporate this payload and achieve the performance requirement.
Remember that this event is about teamwork; engineers design in teams because
complex projects that are due in short periods of time pretty much demand some
kind of division of labor. There are many ways to divide the labor -- perhaps
one person could become expert in computer flight-simulation programs, another
in the craftsmanship techniques of model rocket building, a third in launch
system design, and a fourth in charge of communication. All the members need to
meet and communicate regularly, because what each one does affects how all the
others approach their part of the job. Somebody needs to be the program
manager to make sure everything fits together at the end so that your complex
system will work in flight test.
What, then, are the variables in yours aerospace system's design? Well, the size
and shape of the rocket certainly has a wide range of possibilities, subject to
the overall limitations that the rocket must be safe and stable and made form a
carbonated drink plastic 2 liter bottle. And there are other design variables to
be considered including: what recovery system to use; how to predict or control
flight duration in various weather conditions; and how to cushion and protect
the fragile egg.
What all of this means is that, like all engineers, you must engage in an
"iterative" or logical design process. You start with a very rough design,
evaluate its performance against the requirements, and change the design
progressively until your analysis shows that you have a design that is likely to
meet them. Then you build, test, evaluate the success or failure of the test,
and adjust the design as required until your tests show that the performance
requirements are met. Initial tests are best done as "virtual" flights on a
computer, with the time-consuming construction of an actual rocket saved for
later.
Here is a path that you may wish to follow to take you through the design
process, along with some additional explanation of the design implications of
rocketry terminology used in the Omega Project.
1. Decide on the Level of Complexity. You have a choice: simple or complex. The
complex rocket may give you more time in the air but it will also have more
things that can go wrong on launch day. Find a good balance between the two and
go for it.
2. Accommodate the Payload. Determine what size compartment is required to
contain one
Grade A large egg (maximum diameter 45 millimeters) and cushion them against the
shocks of rocket launch, recovery system deployment in flight, and impact with
the ground at the end of flight.
If you have a flight-termination system that may lead to the eggs landing at
higher (but still safe) speeds, this requires more egg cushioning.
Hint: Make sure you cushion the eggs from impact with the walls of the payload
compartment in every direction including the sides, and when the rocket's
parachute snaps open.
3. Decide on Duration-Control Approach.
What are you going to do to keep the egg in the air for the longest possible
time? Remember the egg does not have to land with the body of the rocket. What
size parachute are you going to use, what is going to be made of, how will you
attached it. There are many factors that determine how fast something falls.
Remember that air resistance plays a big roll in coming down as well as going
up. How can you take the fact that a sheet of paper that is folded falls faster
than one that is not?
4. Learn to use a rocket-design computer program. Such a program is the best way
to work through the remaining steps of flight vehicle design on a basis other
than trial-and-error. Your options for this are described in Appendix.. A
computer program will let you work through the rough possibilities fairly
quickly and discard approaches that simply will not work or designs that are not
aerodynamically stable. No simulation, however, is exactly accurate. Its
estimate of the aerodynamic drag forces on your rocket may be a bit off due to
your construction techniques.
5. Simplicity. The more complex you make your rocket design, the more things it
has that can go wrong. In the real world of engineering, low cost, rapid
delivery, and high reliability is what the customer wants. Add complexity only
where you need to in order to meet performance requirements.
6. Basic design safety. First and foremost, your rocket must be "stable". The
rocket must be constructed in such a way that it fly's straight and lands
without the possibility of hurting anyone or damaging any property.
7. Metal Parts. You may only use non-metal parts for the nose, body, and fins of
your rocket, those
parts that are the main structure of the vehicle. Fiberglass is OK. You may use
miscellaneous metal
hardware items such as screws, snap links, etc.
8. Recovery. Your rocket may be recovered in several separate sections if you
wish. Each section or piece of the rocket must come down safely. A heavy piece
that falls to earth in a stable, non-tumbling/non-gliding mode at high speed
without a recovery system of some kind (parachute, streamer, etc.) is not safe,
and flights that have this happen will be disqualified for being unsafe.
RESOURCES
This Team Handbook is the most important resource you need to participate in the
Omega Project, but where do you go next? The best place to start is by doing
some searches on Google using the key words water rocket. Once you get
familiar with the topic you can then narrow your search for more specific help
on what you wish to know. Also don't be afraid to seek out help form your local
business community. There are often many people who are looking for ways to
bring their expertise into the classroom.
APPENDIX
ROCKET DESIGN AND FLIGHT SIMULATION PROGRAMS
There are several commercial and freeware computer programs available which
will permit you to design a rocket on the computer, determine its aerodynamic
stability, and determine the flight altitude it is likely to reach with
particular rocket motors, and/or determine how long its descent from apogee will
take under various size parachutes. They are summarized below with information
on how to obtain them. All prices below are as of August 14, 2004, and are
subject to change.
RockSim. A commercial rocket design and flight simulation program for Windows.
Supports onscreen rocket design. Calculates Center of Pressure (CP) and Center
of Gravity (CG) locations so the flight stability of the on-screen design can be
determined. Contains an updated built-in rocket motor performance database used
in flight simulations that tell how high the rocket will fly plus other
parameters like velocity at launcher departure and parachute descent time. Works
for single or multistage designs with multiple rocket motors per stage.
Sold by: Apogee Components, Inc.,
www.apogeerockets.com. Cost: $95, s&h not included
SpaceCAD. A commercial rocket design and flight simulation program for Windows.
Supports onscreen rocket design. Calculates Center of Pressure (CP) and Center
of Gravity (CG) locations so the flight stability of the on-screen design can be
determined. Contains an updated built-in rocket motor performance database used
in flight simulations that tell how high the rocket will fly plus other
parameters like velocity at launcher departure and parachute descent time. Works
for single or multistage designs with multiple rocket motors per stage. Sold by:
SpaceCAD, www.spacecad.com. Cost: ???, s&h
included
Winroc. A "freeware" rocket flight simulation and stability-calculation program
for Windows. Does
not support on-screen design. Calculates CP and CG locations of designs that the
user puts in. Contains
a rocket motor database, which can be updated, that permits flight simulations
to tell how high a userspecified
rocket will fly, using different mathematical technique than wRASP. Works for
single or
multi-stage designs with one rocket motor per stage.
Free download from:
http://www.drmoore.org/winroc01.htm. Cost: $0
wRASP. A "freeware" rocket flight simulation and stability-calculation program
for Windows. Does
not support on-screen design. Calculates CP and CG locations of designs that the
user puts in. Contains
a rocket motor database, which can be updated, that permits flight simulations
to tell how high a userspecified
rocket will fly. Works for single or multi-stage designs with one rocket motor
per stage.
Free download from: http://www.wrasp.com/.
Cost: $0
Other free resources:
Parachute descent rate calculation:
http://tinyurl.com/4n3ax, or
http://www.info-central.org/ (recovery)
Recent rocket motor thrust curve data for updating simulation programs:
http://www.thrustcurve.org/
*A PC program, CYBERROC, may be used to test stability for various rocket
designs. Cyberroc may be downloaded from:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/archives/rec.models.rockets/CYBERROC/vcp164.zip
Please note a major part of this handbook is form the Team America Rocketry
Challenge 2005 Team Handbook.