Darwin III: Structures — Motor Bulkhead, Payload Bulkhead & Fin Assembly
Team Endeavour Rocketry, University of Edinburgh, 2022 European Rocketry Challenge (EuRoC)
Darwin III was a 9000m sounding rocket built by a 30-person student team, competing internationally in the COTS-9k category. It's a big, multi-subsystem vehicle — propulsion, avionics, recovery, payload, structures — and my contribution sat within Structures: the motor bulkhead, the payload bulkhead, and the fin assembly (not the composite layup itself).
These are small components in a system that large, but each one carries real consequences if it fails — the motor bulkhead alone has to transmit the full thrust load into the airframe. Working on them was a genuine lesson in how a project this size actually comes together: my parts had to interface precisely with structures, avionics, and payload teams I wasn't directly part of, which meant constant coordination rather than working in isolation.
Outside the CAD work, I also built the rocket stand and designed the team's logo — a nice reminder that a project like this runs on more than just the parts that fly.