SEDASEF: student-built hydrodynamic underwater rocket
A multidisciplinary student team called BELUGA FoF has developed a pressure‑resistant underwater rocket named SEDASEF, controlled by locally developed software. The project took about one year to complete and reached the finals of the TEKNOFEST Blue Homeland Underwater Rocket Competition held at Gölcük Naval Shipyard Command. Under the coordination of ROKETSAN, the team was awarded “Most Original Design”.
Team captain Muhammet Efe Bağdigen explains that 12 students from different departments worked on the rocket, aiming not just for a working vehicle but for genuinely innovative engineering solutions.
From whale flippers to a toroidal propeller
The most distinctive aspects of SEDASEF are its fin geometry and propeller design:
- The fins use a tubercle structure, directly inspired by the bumps on whale flippers that are known to improve flow control. This significantly increases the rocket’s hydrodynamic efficiency.
- For propulsion, the team chose a toroidal propeller, a geometry that can reduce vortices and mitigate some of the negative effects of water flow, leading to smoother and more efficient motion.
Bağdigen describes TEKNOFEST as a valuable platform that brings young engineers together: meeting prominent names in the field and having them see the team’s working environment provided strong motivation and hands‑on feedback.
Team members İbrahim Halil Kaya and Hüseyin Can Yeşil state that their next goal is to enter both national and international competitions with even more advanced underwater systems. They emphasize that such contests are key for students interested in embedded systems, marine robotics and hydrodynamics to gain real‑world project experience and push their designs to the next level every year.
Source: AA Bilim-Teknoloji
