Low cost ground test equipment for atmospheric rocket flights using embedded systems

Author

Babayomi, O.O. ; Osheku, C.A. ; Adetoro, M.A.L. ; Okon, A. ; Opasina, A.O.

Author_Institution

Centre for Space Transp. & Propulsion, Nat. Space R&D Agency (NASRDA), Abuja, Nigeria

fYear

2013

fDate

14-16 Nov. 2013

Firstpage

26

Lastpage

29

Abstract

A low cost ground test system was designed with embedded systems at the core. Remote ignition of the solid rocket motor was implemented via a short message service (SMS) controlled switch. A microcontroller circuit was included to abort activation and a load-cell interfaced with a data acquisition system was used to record thrust generated by the thrust chamber of a solid rocket motor. The approach to obtaining thrust measurements is discussed and results are presented. The maximum thrust measured from the experiment was 1970.5N and the system has the capability to measure thrust values up to 5000N.

Keywords

aerospace testing; data acquisition; electronic messaging; embedded systems; ignition; microcontrollers; rocket engines; switches; test equipment; SMS; atmospheric rocket flight; data acquisition system; embedded system; load-cell interface; low cost ground test equipment; microcontroller circuit; remote ignition; rocket engine; short message service controlled switch; solid rocket motor; thrust chamber; thrust measurement; Data acquisition; Microcontrollers; Rockets; Solids; Strain; Switches; load cell; microcontroller; remote ignition; rocket ground test; thrust sensor;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Emerging & Sustainable Technologies for Power & ICT in a Developing Society (NIGERCON), 2013 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Owerri

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-2016-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NIGERCON.2013.6715635

Filename

6715635