Northwestern's rocketry club entered a collegiate design competition with the goal of controlling the axial rotation of a rocket in real-time from a remote ground station during a flight to 3000 ft.
As Mechanical Team Lead, I led the design and fabrication of an internal flywheel mounted in the rocket body that acted as a rotational counterweight to either stabilize or rotate the rocket based on radio commands and an electronic feedback system. The mechanical design was constrained by top and bottom bulkheads mounted to the exterior of the rocket. Mounted in the top bulkhead was the motor, controlled by the electronics above. The motor was coupled to a shaft reaching to a connector piece shown in the stress analysis screen capture. This piece coupled to the shaft in the central hole and held the flywheel in a keyway. The bottom of this piece was pressed into a bearing mounted in the bottom bulkhead. The flywheel was designed with a high moment of inertia to mass ratio by focusing much of the mass in high walls at the most extreme radius of the flywheel.
After completing the mechanical system, we paired it with its electrical counterpart and tested its ability to stabilize after an external push or rotate the assembly from a standstill by spinning the flywheel the opposite direction of the intended rotation of the rocket body. In competition, the system was successful in controlling the rotation of the rocket.