Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Kwad - Ksu All Weather Autonomous Drone, Nick Farinacci, Sebastian Gomez, Stewart Baker, Ed Sheridan

Symposium of Student Scholars

"KWAD" or "KSU all-Weather Autonomous Drone" project was sponsored by Ultool, LLC to the KSU Research and Service Foundation to create a lightweight drone capable of capturing HD video during all-weather operations. The conditions of all-weather operation include rainfall of one inch per hour and wind speeds of up to twenty miles per hour. In addition, a global minimum structural safety factor of two is required to ensure the system's integrity in extreme weather conditions. Potential mission profiles include autonomous aerial delivery, topological mapping in high moisture areas, security surveillance, search and rescue operations, emergency transportation of medical supplies, and …

Crazyflie 2.1 Quadcopter Nonlinear System Identification, Nhat V. Nguyen, Hope Storro, John Plimpton

2023 Symposium

Quadcopters (quad) are used widely in many industries with crucial applications such as infrastructure inspection or package delivery. The Crazyflie 2.1 quad from Bitcraze provides an excellent platform for research and development. In this project, our goal is to perform system identification on the Crazyflie to propose a complete model. A gray box method is explored, which includes leveraging the parameters that are already known, to develop a set of equations. Through theory, simulations, and measurements, a complete quadcopter model is developed.

An Introductory Investigation Of Dust Devils On Mars: Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling, Alexios Nicolas Philippou, Kakkattukuzhy M. Issac

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

This report investigates the flow characteristics of tornado like vortices which can be used to describe an array of axisymmetric rotating vertical columns of fluid such as dust devils, steam devils and tornadoes. These vortices have been recreated within vortex chambers in research facilities, but in focus of this report the investigation is conducted through numerical simulations using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software package provided by ANSYS. By varying the main governing nondimensional parameter of swirl ratio through the computational domain’s boundary conditions, different flow characteristics appear which confirm theories presented in previous papers. This enables the research conducted …

Servo Mounting Device And Collective Control System Design For The Forward Flight Aero Test Stand, Aaron Jones

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

The majority of the ten-week internship was spent designing a servo mounting device, and a collective control system for the Forward Flight Aero Test (FFAT) stand. The servo mounting device uses four threaded standoffs along with a top plate, held together with screws, that raises the servos above the protruding threaded rods and screws. The collective control system is a rectangular block that attaches the swashplate to the servo arms connected to the servo motor. This control rod is used to translate the rotation from the servo arm into collective control for the blade angle. The control rod has two …

Modeling And Simulation Of An Electrostatic Lunar Particle Sieve, Aaron Berkhoff

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

The following research was conducted to develop a kinetic particle model, which simulates an electromagnetic sieve used for in-situ material utilization on the lunar surface. A code package was developed to simulate an electromagnetic sieve that uses electrodes to transport fine particles within a cylindrical device. Specifically, this research generates an initial working model for the sieve and tests different electrode configurations. The simulation models different electric fields generated by electrodes, kinetic particle dynamics, and lunar particle distribution. During the case study, which investigates different electrode configurations, it was determined that electrodes oriented such that electrodes located above and below …

Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project: April 2023 Status Report, Jill Schmidt

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

This report details the progress of the Missouri S&T Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project as of April 2023 and the future work the team will complete throughout the remainder of 2023 and 2024. This project began in January 2023, and students have been completing preliminary training activities, so they are prepared to begin assembling and testing the eclipse payloads during summer 2023. Throughout the summer, all team members will be actively engaged in this research project and participating in outreach events related to high altitude ballooning.

Performance Evaluation Of Additively Manufactured Carbon/Peek Composites, Matik S. Heskin

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

Carbon/PEEK composites have a broad range of applications due to their combinations of superior creep properties and excellent strength to weight ratios. Like all fiber-based composites they are limited geometrically by their required manufacturing processes. Additively manufactured (AM) materials overcome this issue and can be formed into incredibly complex shapes. By combining these two fields, a material limited in application by geometry can have its shortcomings supported with AM processes.

AM carbon/PEEK composites have already been created but this relatively new material still needs property characterization. Therefore, the objective of this work will be to evaluate the structural performance of …

High Pressure Injection Process For Ceramic Composites, Samuel Weiler

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

Ceramic materials are valued for good heat resistance and corrosion resistance. Due to these benefits, they are widely used in the aviation, automotive, medical, construction, and other industries. Ceramic materials are also both hard and brittle, qualities that are not ideal in many applications. To reduce brittleness, and other undesirable characteristics of ceramics, engineers have turned to composites to increase the mechanical properties of these materials. By adding composite particles or fibers, these characteristics can be improved. Constructing ceramic composites is not without its challenges, however. Current processes are prone to high porosity, high shrinkage, and poor accuracy of parts. …

Comparison Of Injection Molded Abs Using Conventional Steel And Novel Composite-Based Additively Manufactured Mold Plates, John Mitchell

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

Polymer injection molding processes have been used for over 100 years to create high-volume parts quickly and efficiently. Injection molding uses mold plates that are traditionally made of very hard tool steels, such as P20 steel, which is extremely heavy and has very long lead times to build new molds. In this study, composite-based additive manufacturing (CBAM) was used to create mold plates using long-fiber carbon fiber and polyether ether ketone (PEEK). These mold plates were installed in an injection molding machine, and rectangular flat plates were produced using Lustran 348 acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). Tensile testing was performed on …

Multi-Disciplinary Analysis Surrogate Based On Twin-Generator Generative Adversarial Networks For Electric Drone, Samuel Sisk

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

Multi-Disciplinary Analysis and Optimization (MDAO) plays an important role in the future of aviation, especially relating to Urban Air Mobility (UAM). MDAO for UAM effectively quantifies and maximizes system performance and safety while minimizing cost or consumption. Electric drone takeoff trajectory design aims to minimize energy consumption while fulfilling acceleration and other constraints to keep passengers comfortable. Conventional simulation-based MDAO is computationally expensive due to repeatedly evaluating physics-based models while naïvely constructing machine learning predictive models, also known as surrogate models, do not scale well with large-scale problems due to the “curse of dimensionality”. A twin-generator generative adversarial networks (Twin-GAN) …

Lunar In-Situ Aluminum Production Through Molten Salt Electrolysis (Lisap-Mse), Jacob Ortega, Jeffrey D. Smith, Fateme Rezaei, David Bayless, William P. Schonberg, Daniel S. Stutts, Daoru Frank Han

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

The goal of Artemis is to establish a sustained presence on the Moon. To achieve so, numerous resources are necessary. The Moon contains several essential elements needed to sustain human presence. Most of those elements are trapped in the form of minerals. To refine those minerals into useful materials, reduction methods are needed. Most reduction methods on Earth require large amounts of mass and power which is unrealistic for early stages of building a lunar base. To solve this problem, we are developing a concept of Lunar In-Situ Aluminum Production through Molten Salt Electrolysis (LISAP-MSE).

The LISAP-MSE project, if successful, …

Progress In Optimization Of Electrostatic Sieve Concept For Transport Of Lunar Regolith Using A Genetic Algorithm, Easton Ingram

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

A method for optimizing electrostatic dust transport systems using a genetic algorithm is in development. Applications to electrostatic sieving are discussed for use on the lunar surface. This simulation will allow for rapid development, testing, and optimization of electrostatic particle transport designs with large search spaces. Current progress and ongoing work for the simulation is reviewed.

Supersonic Wind Tunnel Improvement For Advanced Laser-Based Non-Intrusive Diagnostics, Joshua Gary

NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium

This work presents an approach to the design, and theoretical application, of a new test section for the Missouri S&T Supersonic Wind Tunnel to be used with advanced laserbased non-intrusive diagnostics. Supersonic wind tunnel test sections present multiple challenges. They need to ensure proper flow by avoiding jet-flow interactions and ensuring started conditions; they need to withstand large pressure loads in the case of tunnel unstart; they need to provide easy optical access for advanced diagnostics; they need to be modular and adaptable for different experiments. This work presents detailed analytical and numerical analyses of the mechanical loads. Based on …

Mask-On Breathing Awareness Trainer (Mobat), Robert Larson, Yuzhong Shen

Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Student Capstone Conference

Currently there is no low-cost solution to teach large quantities of Naval Aviators on how to correctly breath on an oxygen mask. This report will discuss the design and implementation of a mask-on breathing apparatus for use with United States Naval Aircrew for initial and annual familiarization. With the current uptick in physiological episodes within the naval aviation enterprise, there has been a need to find solutions to this problem. Currently when a naval aircrew is trained in aviation physiological threats, they do so with normobaric hypoxia tools in the form of the 9A19 Normobaric Hypoxia Trainer for aircrew who …

Statistical Approach To Quantifying Interceptability Of Interaction Scenarios For Testing Autonomous Surface Vessels, Benjamin E. Hargis, Yiannis E. Papelis

Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Student Capstone Conference

This paper presents a probabilistic approach to quantifying interceptability of an interaction scenario designed to test collision avoidance of autonomous navigation algorithms. Interceptability is one of many measures to determine the complexity or difficulty of an interaction scenario. This approach uses a combined probability model of capability and intent to create a predicted position probability map for the system under test. Then, intercept-ability is quantified by determining the overlap between the system under test probability map and the intruder’s capability model. The approach is general; however, a demonstration is provided using kinematic capability models and an odometry-based intent model.

A Bidirectional Deep Lstm Machine Learning Method For Flight Delay Modelling And Analysis, Desmond B. Bisandu, Irene Moulitsas

National Training Aircraft Symposium (NTAS)

Flight delays can be prevented by providing a reference point from an accurate prediction model because predicting flight delays is a problem with a specific space. Only a few algorithms consider predicted classes' mutual correlation during flight delay classification or prediction modelling tasks. None of these existing methods works for all scenarios. Therefore, the need to investigate the performance of more models in solving the problem of flight delay is vast and rapidly increasing. This paper presents the development and evaluation of LSTM and BiLSTM models by comparing them for a flight delay prediction. The LSTM does the feature extraction …