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Come to our FIRST general body meeting on September 8th in Driftmier 1240 at 6:00 PM!
UGA Rocketry gives students the opportunity to extend their involvement in IREC beyond extracurricular project work and into the College of Engineering's senior Capstone Design program.
UGA's Aerospace Engineering Certificate specifically allows students to complete the discipline-specific MCHE 4910/4911 or ELEE/CSE 4910/4911 Capstone Design sequence with a project related to the aerospace engineering domain.
Capstone Design is a two-semester experience in which senior engineering students work in multidisciplinary teams to take a real engineering problem from project definition through design, analysis, prototyping, testing, and final presentation.
2026 // Expanding the Research
HEART (Heart-Valve Effectiveness under Applied Rocket Thrust)
was a biomedical research payload flown on Magnolia to investigate how a mechanical aortic heart valve behaves under the high-acceleration environment of rocket flight. The experiment used a 17 mm St. Jude Medical mechanical heart valve and compared flow rate and fluid temperature under ground conditions with measurements collected during flight. The goal was to determine whether elevated acceleration altered the pressure conditions across the valve enough to change its flow consistency or cyclic behavior.
The payload was built as a compact closed-loop fluid system inside a 3U structure. A micropump circulated an artificial blood analog through the system, while two solenoid valves alternated the pressure across the heart valve at approximately 120 cycles per minute. A Raspberry Pi Pico W controlled the valve actuation and collected data from flow-rate and temperature sensors. The system also required custom tubing transitions, fittings, power regulation, electronics, and structural packaging, making HEART a strongly multidisciplinary project spanning mechanical design, fluid mechanics, embedded systems, instrumentation, and biomedical engineering.
The project also went through significant design iteration before flight. Early versions experienced leakage and sealing issues, leading the team to redesign printed components, strengthen connections, and add hose clamps. A preliminary test flight was then used to verify structural integrity and sealing, and the payload remained leak-free under acceleration. During flight, the onboard system recorded flow and temperature data at 0.05-second intervals for comparison against ground-test baselines.
HEART demonstrates how IREC can serve as a broader research platform rather than only a rocket-design competition. It gave students the opportunity to integrate biomedical research with aerospace testing in a real flight environment, showing that IREC-related projects can support work in mechanical engineering, biological engineering, electronics, controls, software, sensors, and experimental design.
2025 // I.M.P.U.L.S.E.
Two Capstone Teams, One Flight Experiment
The experimental Capstone team designed and built the physical payload carried by Cloud.
Their responsibility included the 3U payload structure, liquid tank, LiDAR measurement system, electronics, Raspberry Pi-based data collection, power system, mechanical integration, environmental testing, data processing, and preparation for flight.
The experiment was designed around a cylindrical liquid tank with a LiDAR sensor positioned above the free surface. During flight, the sensor measured changes in liquid height, allowing the team to reconstruct how the fluid moved under rocket acceleration.
This gave students a Capstone project involving:
Mechanical design, CAD, electronics, sensors, embedded computing, manufacturing, experimental design, testing, MATLAB, data analysis, systems integration, technical communication
I.M.P.U.L.S.E.-S
A second Capstone team approached the same problem computationally: in a Liquid Sloshing Simulation
I.M.P.U.L.S.E.-S developed a high-fidelity CFD model of the liquid inside the experimental tank using ANSYS Fluent. The team's report also explicitly identifies the project as work performed for Senior Design 4910/4911.
The team progressed from simplified two-dimensional models to a full three-dimensional transient multiphase simulation. Their final model incorporated the actual tank geometry, a 60% liquid fill ratio, rocket acceleration profiles, lateral vibration effects, a refined mesh of roughly 800,000 cells, and a Volume of Fluid approach to track the air-water interface.
The work involved:
Computational Fluid Dynamics, ANSYS Fluent, transient multiphase flow, meshing, numerical stability, convergence studies, launch-data processing, model validation, aerospace fluid dynamics, data visualization
The ultimate goal was to compare predicted liquid displacement against the measurements collected by the physical payload.
How the Capstone Process Fits IREC
IREC has served as a Capstone Design client and provides opportunities for senior students to pursue aerospace-focused projects connected to the competition program. Project availability and assignment depend on the Capstone selection process, faculty approval, and the technical needs of the IREC program.
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