This blog covers the day to day progress of water rocket development by the Air Command Water Rockets team. It is also a facility for people to provide feedback and ask questions.

Saturday, April 03, 2010

Fiberglassing pressure vessels


Yesterday we had our first go at fiber-glassing some bottles in order to be able to safely increase the launch pressure. We wrapped one spliced pair with a single layer of glass and the other with a double wrap.



The bottle on the left has a single layer and the one on the right is double layer. The bottles are only spliced with Sikaflex 11FC glue for an air tight seal. We are going to give the splices a week to fully cure before hydro testing them to destruction. I'll post the results of these tests when they are available.


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2 comments:

Todd said...

Hi George, looks interesting. I look forward to seeing the results.

On a similar topic ... what pressure have you tested your hoses and abort valves etc too ?

-todd-
HHWRSA

George Katz said...

Hi Todd,

We have tested the cluster launcher to 300psi. The hoses we use are rated to 250psi for operational pressure, but we have tested them to 300 as well. Actual burst pressure is likely to be much higher.

Our regular launcher should also be able to withstand the 300psi as its all metal construction. Though we haven't tested it to that pressure yet.

We've held off with publishing the results as we made a couple more reinforced bottles (to be tested tonight), so want to publish all the results together. One of the new spliced-pairs is made from 2L bottles. The results should be up by Friday.

Cheers

- George