LAD Bleed Valves
Background
The UC Irvine Rocket Project (UCIRP) is an undergraduate led team of students looking to design and fabricate a liquid-fueled rocket. With faculty advisor Professor Mark Walter the team is competing in the Friends of Amateur Dollar Per Foot Challenge, a competition between universities to create a single stage liquid propellant rocket with a $1 per foot of altitude above the end of the launch rail reward for teams that can complete this challenge. So far the team has been able to reach a point where they can run static test fires for their Preliminary Test Engine (P.T.E.) using a test stand. The team is currently looking to redefine the rocket's subsystems to be able to better optimize the launch vehicle's mass. The main rocket team has found issues with the mass of the current bleed valves and are looking for this team to create a Bleed Valve Actuation System (BVAS) that will be lightweight and help optimize the weight of the launch vehicle.
Goals & Objectives
The overall goal is to deliver a fully manufactured bleed valve system that will be mounted on the rocket and to document the entire engineering process. By the end of fall quarter, a design and a bill of materials will be completed. The manufacturing, analysis, and testing will be completed in winter quarter. The final deliverable must be able to operate at 600psi of pressure and at cryogenic temperatures (-196C) while actuating in less than a second. The system must be able to achieve all of this while weighing less than 3.5 lbs.
The Vision
The current bleed valve system is a solenoid valve that fulfills all requirements (in fact, exceeds them) except for weight and size. The benefit of the solenoid valve is that it is a reliable and fast acting comprehensive system. However, it comes at too high of a space and weight premium. The vision is to break down the system into three components: actuator, linkage, and valve. The team will find off-the-shelf hardware for the actuator and valve and design a linkage that will connect the two. By breaking down the system into separate components, it will be easier to customize a system that strictly fulfills the needs of UCIRP.
Team Contacts
Alan Calderon (acalder7@uci.edu)
Dijia Liu (dijial1@uci.edu)
LeAnn Liu (ltliu1@uci.edu)
Sponsor/ Advisor
Professor Mark Walter (m.walter@uci.edu)
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