Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Cfd And Heat Transfer Analysis Of Rocket Cooling Techniques On An Aerospike Nozzle, Geoffrey Sullivan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years the development of rocket engines has been mainly focused on improving the engine cycle and creating new fuels. Rocket nozzle design has not been changed since the late 1960s. Recent needs for reliable and reusable rockets, as well as advancements in additive manufacturing, have brought new interest into the aerospike nozzle concept. This nozzle is a type of altitude adjusting nozzle that is up to 90% more efficient than bell nozzles at low altitudes and spends up to 30% less fuel. Since the nozzle body is submerged in the hot exhaust gasses it is difficult to keep …

Plasma Aerodynamics: Experimental Quantification Of The Lift Force Generated On An Airfoil Using Plasma Actuation To Estimate Power Requirements In Small Uav Applications, Getachew Ashenafi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research addressed the amount of electric power required to induce specific changes in lift force using a NACA 2127 airfoil with a chord length of ~28 mm, connected to a micro load cell, in a wind tunnel of 103 square centimeter cross-section. A DBD plasma actuator supplied by a ZVS driven high voltage pulsed DC circuit, operating at a frequency of 17.4 kHz, was utilized for voltages of up to 5000 V. Two configurations of electrode gapping were compared to determine the efficient use of power. The configuration with a gap of ~1 mm between the upstream and downstream …

Safran Seat Attachment System, Craig John Kimball, Tyler Bragg, Lynette Cox

Mechanical Engineering

This final design review (FDR) document outlines the senior design project being carried out by a team of mechanical engineering undergraduate students attending California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo for Safran Seats in Santa Maria, CA. The project originally was to design, build, and test a universal attachment to secure a widebody business class seat to seven aircraft models with different seat track geometry. The goal was to design, document, and create a finished product that fits design, weight, and manufacturing requirements, as well as passes static 9G FWD testing. Structural analysis, manufacturing analysis, FEA, and CAD assemblies will …

Characterization Of Directed Energy Deposition Additively Manufactured Grcop-42 Alloy, Scott Landes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

GRCop is an alloy family constructed of copper, chromium, and niobium and was developed by NASA for high heat flux applications. The first of its kind, GRCop-84, was specifically designed for the environments seen by channel cooled main combustion chamber liners. To further increase thermal conductivity while maintaining material strength characteristics, the percentage of alloying elements were cut in half and GRCop- 42 was developed. In recent years, NASA has successfully additively manufactured GRCop with comparable material characteristics to wrought GRCop using a Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) process. Benefits of this process include fabrication of intricate cooling channels as …

Development Of A Multi-Probe Kelvin Scanner Device For Industrially-Relevant Characterization Of Surface-Activated Carbon Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastic Composites, Kirby Simon

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic (CFRTP) composites are becoming increasingly attractive materials in manufacturing due to their lightweight nature, mechanical strength, and corrosion resistance. Surface activation of these materials is usually required during processing to increase the bond strength of assemblies (aerospace and automotive industries) or improve adhesion with implants (biomedical industry). Industrially-relevant, nondestructive quality control methods for assessing the activation state of these materials do not currently exist, however. Applying principles discovered through the use of scanning probe microscopy, a multiple-probe Kelvin scanning (MPKS) device has been developed that can assess the uniformity of the activation state of plasma-treated CFRTP …

Investigating Using Titanium Zirconium Molybdenum For Additively Manufacturing Aerospace Components, Justin Hunter Vanhoose

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Mankind throughout history has possessed an innate characteristic to explore, migrating to new frontiers.The requirement for this travel is most broadly associated with the need to pursue more resources. Rockets have been used as a means of weapons since the Sung Dynasty in the thirteenth empire and have now been integrated for travel/transport. The sophistication of rocketry and propulsion has reached a level to where it is plausible that mankind will be a multi-planetary species. The space industry has grown significantly with the advancement of the sophistication of these rocket technologies. However, a specific challenge to overcome in the space …

Ultraviolet Imager Application For A Cube Satellite, Jason Grillo, Troy Hajjar, Brady Hill

Mechanical Engineering

This document serves as the final design review (FDR) report for the 2018 Cal Poly CubeSat Ultraviolet Imager senior project, sponsored by UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratories (SSL). SSL wants to monitor the ionosphere above Earth to gain a better understanding of its properties and particle interactions. Far Ultraviolet (FUV) imaging is a good way to obtain high quality images of the ionosphere and the Earth's auroras, and advancement in optic technologies have made cube satellites (CubeSats) an ideal vessel for a FUV imager, as they are relatively low-cost, lightweight, and can be repeatedly deployed. These CubeSat FUV imagers could …

Thermal Modelling And Validation Of Heat Profiles In An Rf Plasma Micro-Thruster, Alec Sean Henken

Master's Theses

The need and demand for propulsion devices on nanosatellites has grown over the last decade due to interest in expanding nanosatellite mission abilities, such as attitude control, station-keeping, and collision avoidance. One potential micro-propulsion device suitable for nanosatellites is an electrothermal plasma thruster called Pocket Rocket. Pocket Rocket is a low-power, low-cost propulsion platform specifically designed for use in nanosatellites such as CubeSats. Due to difficulties associated with integrating propulsion devices onto spacecraft such as volume constraints and heat dissipation limitations, a characterization of the heat generation and heat transfer properties of Pocket Rocket is necessary. Several heat-transfer models of …

Design Of Shape-Conforming Nosecone For Optimal Fluid Flow From Transonic To Supersonic Range, Anna Tombazzi

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Modern flight vehicles, such as rockets, missiles, and airplanes, experience a force caused by forebody wave drag during the flight. This drag force is induced when the frontal point of each vehicle breaks the pressure wave during flight. Efforts to reduce this wave drag force to improve flight efficiency include modifying the nosecone profile of the flight vehicles to lower the drag force.

This project revolved around creating a design to make the transformation of nosecone shapes from a ¾ Parabolic profile to a ½ Power Series profile possible, mid-flight. Using a novel nosecone assembly, shape memory alloys (SMAs) and …

Evaluation Of Turbulence Variable Distributions For Incompressible Fully Rough Pipe Flows, Emilie B. Fowler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The specific turbulent kinetic energy, root-mean-square fluctuating vorticity, and mean-vortexwavelength distributions are presented for fully rough pipe flow. The distributions of these turbulence variables are obtained from a proposed turbulence model. Many of the turbulence models commonly used for computational fluid dynamics are based on an analogy between molecular and turbulent transport. However, traditional k-ε and k-ω models fail to exhibit proper dependence on the molecular viscosity. Based on a rigorous application of the Boussinesq’s hypothesis, Phillips proposed a vorticity-based transport equation for the turbulent kinetic energy. The foundation for this vorticity-based transport equation is presented. In future development of …