Horizontal Rocket Engine Test Stand

This was a project developed to measure the thrust curve of our custom designed hybrid rocket engines. However, this stand works with all types of rocket motors and engines. The main portion of this project came in terms of being able to allocate all the data and being able to control all the solenoid valves. Which is why I began work on the "Junction Box" (Name given from it joining all the sensors and solenoids together onto a single board).

Test Control Box

I designed this Box using a Pelican style box to connect all sensors back to our Data Acquisition System. It houses all of the following:
- Emergency Shut Off Button
- Igniter Arming Keyswitch & Firing Switch
- Power Supply
​- Support for Raspberry Pi Display for Test Data

Cold Flow Board

This board is responsible for just testing the fluid panel with our new micro controller board that replaced our old NI DAQ. Located on this board are:
- 8x 10 bit ADCs
- 1 Wireless XBEE Radio Module 
- Support for 1 Thermocouple
​- Support for 4 Pressure Transducers
​- Support for 4 Solenoid Valves
- Support for 4 Limit Switches
- Support for 1 Scale

Hot Fire Board

This board was designed to actually perform all the functions for a hot fire test of future Hybrid and Liquid engines. This board has:
  • 10x 16bit ADCs
  • Support for 3 Load Cells
  • Support for 10 Pressure Transducers
  • Support for 10 K type Thermocouples
  • Support for 5 Solenoids
  • Support for 5 Limit Switches
  • Support for 2 Thermistors
  • Support for 1 Igniter
  • Auxiliary Battery Power Supply
HotFireBoard.ino

    



















Testing Videos










[10/26/2019] Igniter Sequencing Test



This test was a verification test for our system to detect igniter combustion and immediately begin flowing nitrous oxide through our run line. 














[10/19/2019] Igniter Test



This test was conducted to test the ability of our test site system being able to ignite an e-match igniter and measure temperature without damaging the temperature.














 [5/1/2019] Cold Flow Test



This test was conducted in order to validate our feed system and verify we have complete control over our testsite.