Parachute Testing

For our mission we had a requirement of having a parachute that had a minimum velocity of 10 m/s. To achieve this we assigned Luke to make prototypes and test them. We did some initial research which can be found in the appendix.

Parachute testing

For the start of the creation, we used some spare materials that we had left over from previous projects. Using data from the drag equation he calculated the optimal diameter to use for our parachute. We then printed a design from a website that allowed the customisation of parachute designs with your own diameter see the appended text below. Then Luke used old materials to cut and sew a prototype design.

To test the prototype, we went to the top of our building, which we measured was 7.74m above the ground. The rest of the students stayed at the bottom of the building and waited for the drop of the parachute. Luke dropped the parachute a total of three times on to a foam mat so that if the parachute had an issue then it would not break on the impact. After we recorded the time taken for each drop we had to analyse the data. Using the equation V=2s/t, we calculated the velocity from each drop. The first drop had a velocity of 9.86 m/s; not as good as we had hoped, the second drop had a velocity of 11.82 m/s; which was a good velocity for our parachute, the third drop had a velocity of 12.69 m/s; also a good velocity. Overall our average velocity was 11.46 m/s which was enough velocity for our parachute. To enable recovery we decided for our final design we will use a luminous orange material to enable us to find the location of the CanSat. But since the parachute will detach, we will make the actual CanSat a bright material too and have the option to install and use a GPS signal to locate the CanSat.