Testing Sustainable Material for Aerospace Application

Aerospace vehicles, such as a rocket, need to be light weight. They carry heavy payloads and critical flight instrumentation (avionics) which need to be protected. Typically, aerospace vehicles contain single use parts, some of which may be made of even nylon and polystyrene, that are not environmentally friendly. Such materials can harm soils and the ecosystems upon disposal. This paper looks at replacing some of these aerospace vehicle parts, mainly the parts protecting the rocket avionics, by a sustainable biodegradable material. This study looks at the performance of the rocket avionics when enclosed by such sustainable material. The work presented in this paper involves utilizing computer-aided design (CAD) modeling coupled with numerical flight simulation. The aerospace vehicle, with the sustainable material parts, is flight tested.