Design 1:

We had done some research online about the fins that certain rockets use but in the end we had designed our own 4 within Solidworks.

The first design was a simple trapizium and this was the first design we had made as it was the easiest to make and test in order to visually see how aerodynamic it is. The stability is also important as if the fins are not stable then the rocket will drift in different directions and won’t go up.

From the CAD simulations we saw that this fin was great at dispersing air and not really being dragged down, this is probably due to the fact that it is straight and very thin. However, we did note that this may mean that it may not be as durable as if it were to curve then the whole fin would be inefficient.

 

Design 2:

 

 

 

The second design was similar to the first one but had been leaned to one side so that the fin could be exposed to more air and we were hoping that this would make the rocket spin. This was a bit of a curveball as we hadn’t found any other website that had a design similar to this.

Evidently the curved shaped enabled more air to have contact with the fin and therefore producing more drag so this fin was unacceptable to go the highest height however, from this we learnt that the best way to avoid drag would be to have as little contact with air as possible and to make sure that there is no place for the air to accumulate as underneat the fin there was alot of air build up.

Design 3:

the third design was a fin that was below the rocket itself and we had found online that this was a popular fin to use within rockets and therefore we wanted to look into what makes it so good.

 

As you can see the only drag on the fin is the point at which it meets the bottle and so it is very good for drag and making it the best fin design to use within the project .