On February 25th, TREL volunteered at&nbsp;Girl&rsquo;s Day, an annual UT event that promotes STEM to elementary and middle school girls. This year, the event attracted over 10,000 students! At TREL&rsquo;s booth, we helped the kids make and launch their own mini paper&nbsp;rockets&nbsp;with parachutes. Through this activity, they learned about the different parts of a&nbsp;rocket&nbsp;and the&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;testing process.&nbsp; We also set up a bottle&nbsp;rocket&nbsp;with a bike pump and the woosh bottle experiment so they could see the effects of pressure build up and learn about the basics of propulsion, respectively. Our booth was really busy, and it was amazing to see TREL members interacting with children and helping them get excited about&nbsp;rockets.
<img src="https://trel-directus.up.railway.app/assets/ab9570c4-89a4-495f-b41e-b8d9a64ea562?width=1042&amp;height=1236" alt="girlsday_collage" />

A Busy Girl's Day!

On February 9th, the RP-1 Qualification tank finished being wound at Firefly Aerospace&rsquo;s Briggs site. This is the first COPV tank that the lab will be able to put through qualification testing and is a milestone that has been years in the making! From early designs and analysis that were adapted as Halycon's requirements transformed, to various development tests, and finally to the actual winding of this flight-like tank, there has been a lot of hard work and dedication put in by members of the Structures team past and present to get to this point. Notably, TREL&rsquo;s COPVs are designed in-house and are one of the components that distinguish Halcyon from other rockets being developed in collegiate labs. Moving forward, the RP-1 fuel tank will be qualification tested with on our hydrostatic test cart system at PRC to verify the design. Once completed, Halcyon&rsquo;s actual RP-1 flight fuel tank will be wound.
<img src="https://trel-directus.up.railway.app/assets/a23084e3-2165-4866-b59a-21a81c7b0a11?width=1284&amp;height=1589" alt="RP-1_QualTank_2" />
"Everybody in the room was really happy with how [the tank] came out and it was awesome to see our designs fully realized. We learned a lot talking with Firefly employees and technicians. I'm proud of our team and excited to continue with the next 2 tanks!", Aakash Akkineni, Structures COPV RE
A very big thank you to the Structures group at Firefly for not only winding our tanks, but also providing continuous support and mentorship. We couldn&rsquo;t do it without them!&nbsp;

TREL's First RP-1 Qualification Tank

On February 25th, our lab was showcased at TEDx UT Austin. Alongside other STEM-focused organizations, TREL had the opportunity to connect with a variety of UT community members and to share our work and mission. We received various questions about how our lab functioned and the prototypes and hardware we had on display. The people that stopped by our booth were able to see our Heatsink and TXE-2 engines, skirt prototypes, and our thrust vector control (TVC) system. We also set up the scale-model of Halcyon at the entrance of the event which was a real showstopper!&nbsp;
<img src="https://trel-directus.up.railway.app/assets/7d2f557c-4d0e-4512-9e0f-c6778fd25f1b?width=1030&amp;height=1342" alt="tedex_23_collage" />

TREL at TEDx 2023

Last month, the Hotfire team conducted a LOX Cold Flow test on the pintle of the TXE-2 engine. Not only is this their first test of the semester, but it kicks off a series of hardware tests that will be run on the new engine. The team overcame several blockers to reach this first milestone, and has been working very hard to revamp and prepare the test stand for the upcoming rounds of testing.
Through this test, the Hotfire team was able to characterize hydraulic resistance, the LOX priming time, and trace the temperature of the pintle inlet. The data collected will be used to inform future work on the injector, determine tank set pressures to hit nominal flow rate, and to ultimately determine the start sequence for the engine hotfire later this fall.
Upcoming, the Hotfire team will prepare to conduct a RP-1 Cold Flow to qualify the combustion chamber's regen channels and generate the engine timing sequences. They have also begun work on the Igniter tests.
The success of the LOX Cold Flow test was a culmination of hard work from many TREL members under Ben Juegner and Zachary Hestand's leadership. A big shout out to the test crew - congratulations on all of your hard work!
<img src="https://trel-directus.up.railway.app/assets/adaf9f04-f982-407d-828a-5e23d1c31758?width=1268&amp;height=938" alt="Cold Flow Crew 1" /><img src="https://trel-directus.up.railway.app/assets/e5236439-558f-4a13-a08a-ee03309df6f8?width=1284&amp;height=943" alt="Cold Flow Crew 2" />
<h3>9.9.22 LOX Cold Flow Test Crew</h3>
Test Conductor: Ben Juegner Console: Gabe Bishop Technicians: Brandon Nguyen and Brandon Huynh Data: Ben McCord Injector RE: Camden Dortch Shadows/Observers: Holden Richards, Hugo Gonzalez, Ryan Bateman

Successful LOX Cold Flow Test

TREL was originally founded to compete in the Base 11 competition. The mission of the competition was to encourage an increased representation of inclusion for women and minorities in STEM, while attempting to launch the first collegiate liquid bipropellant rocket a hundred kilometers to the Karman line for a prize of $1 million. Due to extenuating circumstances with Covid this challenge has since been canceled. Nevertheless, TREL is still aiming for the stars, and plans to continue pushing the limits of science and rocketry and achieve this feat regardless of the monetary reward being removed. Elementum 3D and EOS North America have partnered with TREL to push the limits of science and rocketry with the inclusion of additive manufacturing, printer technology and advanced materials. Our partners, EOS and Elementum 3D, have been an incredibly valuable asset in helping TREL take major strides towards accomplishing our project of Halcyon. With their help we&rsquo;ve recently been able to 3D print our rocket engine.
<img src="https://trel-directus.up.railway.app/assets/6d964747-14e9-4132-a889-8f3a76cd2e3d?width=946&amp;height=402" alt="The chamber print in-progress and some dev prints of the injector" />
By using 3D printing we are able to have a single piece combustion chamber helping guarantee less points of failure, special geometries to optimize regen channels for max cooling with minimal pressure drop, a greatly simplified manufacturing process, unique design capabilities, and it has allowed for us to have a special injector design, making this print potentially the most efficient collegiate rocket engine! The chamber is made up of a copper alloy to withstand high chamber pressure and is designed to be fully reusable, as well as be able to support up to 60 second fire durations. With our engine in hand, TREL will continue to shoot for the stars, and with the progress made so far, it won&rsquo;t be long now before we&rsquo;re ready for lift-off!
<img src="https://trel-directus.up.railway.app/assets/6a3ae95e-fbc2-4fc6-9c6e-cb88d293506c?width=947&amp;height=432" alt="TREL members standing in front of the EOS sign and another view of the TXE-2 print" />

TXE-2 Havoc Print

Last month on March 5th, TREL was given the exciting opportunity to showcase its progress in the TEDxUTAustin 2022 Blueprints event. The event's goal was to inspire others to create and innovate by showcasing the beginnings and progress of large projects. TREL was a perfect fit for this and were able to highlight the lab's progress on Halcyon to other current and potential innovators.
<img src="https://trel-directus.up.railway.app/assets/64338c6f-213e-4e3a-b145-7e569c2303c5?width=3024&amp;height=4032" alt="Txe 2x Ut" /><img src="https://trel-directus.up.railway.app/assets/c6bff7cb-70a8-4ee6-9739-d30ad116099d?width=4032&amp;height=3024" alt="Trel Display" />

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A Busy Girl's Day!

TREL's First RP-1 Qualification Tank

TREL at TEDx 2023

Successful LOX Cold Flow Test

TXE-2 Havoc Print

Event Spotlight - TREL at TEDx 2022