Parachute Project

By: Ross King

Understand

• The purpose of this project was to keep an egg from breaking after throwing it off a 12 meter high drop.

• We had to create a two parachutes, the main parachute and a drag chute to bring the main parachute out, to keep the egg from breaking.

Explore

Ideas:• Multiple small parachutes• Huge main parachute• A big parachute and under it, a smaller

parachute with a hole in the middle• Add flaps to the egg container• Lightweight egg container

Define

Best Solutions:• Having a big main parachute• A lightweight egg container• Make sure the drogue chute pulls on the main

chute with enough force to deploy it• Short strings to prevent tangling

Ideate

• Creating a ½ meter radius parachute• Creating a 1/5 meter radius drag chute

Prototype

Refine

• After realizing that our main parachute would not open, we had to make some adjustments

• We changed the probes height to 20cm instead of 12cm for more volume

• We changed the drogue chute to have a ¼ meter radius instead of 1/5 meter.

• We made the strings of the main chute .5 meters instead of .8 meters

Refine Cont.

Solution

• 130 g• We would rate ourselves a 6.5 because even though our parachuteworked, it barely did and we completed it on the last day of testing.

Solution Cont.

• If we were to do this project again, we would make the initial probe’s volume much larger and the main parachute larger, while also using lighter material for the probe.

Solution Cont.

Solution Cont.

• Our actual terminal velocity of the probe was less than 2 meters per second each trial (see chart in previous slide)

• The extra surface area from the drogue chute helped our main chute slow the probe down

• It was also windy when we dropped our probe, aiding in opening the chute and slowing the probe down