The Structures Department is responsible for conceiving, designing, building, and testing the structures used within the team, applying engineering models and criteria. The department primarily focuses on designing the sounding rockets and support structures such as the launch rail and test rigs when needed. For this reason, work within the department is divided into theoretical activities, aimed at design and simulation, and hands-on activities, aimed at manufacturing and testing. On the manufacturing side, we use technologies such as 3D printers, CNC mills, and composite material lamination.
Design and sizing activities involve selecting the engineering solutions to adopt when designing the structures used within the team, and developing them using technologies such as CAD (Computer Aided Design) software like Fusion 360. In particular, during the preliminary design of the rocket, we use OpenRocket to check how changes to the volumes and masses of our structures affect the rocket’s simulated flight at every update, ensuring compliance with the mission’s constraints.
We use FEM (Finite Element Method) simulations to estimate how our structures respond to external stresses, in order to ensure maximum strength with minimum weight and to maintain their integrity under operating conditions.
We use additive manufacturing technologies such as FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) 3D printers to build secondary structures for our more powerful model rockets, as well as tools for manufacturing, such as tools for “cold” lamination of composite materials. We also make use of professional CNC machines provided by our sponsors to build structures in plywood and aluminum alloy.
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