CFD and FEA

Using CFD to Manufacture a Carbon Fiber Boat Tail for the 2025 Spaceport America Rocket

Project Lead

Vineet Chaudhary

Active Team Size: 6

About CFD/Boat tail

This projects aims to model the Spaceport America Cup 2025 rocket using CFD as well as to design and manufacture a carbon fiber boat tail for the rocket.

Students will learn meshing techniques, CFD, and fluid mechanics. They will model the SPAC rocket in Fusion 360, design and iterate on a boat tail to minimize drag, and develop manufacturing methods to build it.

In the future, we’d like to utilize this talent in characterizing air brakes for use in future rockets and possibly the SPAC 2026 rocket.

Learning Objectives

Mastering ANSYS Fluent.
Modeling various rockets using CFD.
Designing boattails and analyzing their performance impact.
Manufacturing boattails out of carbon fiber composites.

Projects

Moonburner 2-Stage Rocket

Boattail Design (CFD)

ASCENT Flight Computer

IPL Cubesat Payload

RF Research & Custom Antennas

Live Video

Data Aquisition Board (DAQ)

Composite Characterization