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Full-Text Articles in Structures and Materials

Design, Manufacturing And Testing Of An Environmentally-Green Bipropellant Thruster, Alex Bendoyro, Gabriel Sanchez, Erin Stearns, Phillip Takahashi Jun 2011

Design, Manufacturing And Testing Of An Environmentally-Green Bipropellant Thruster, Alex Bendoyro, Gabriel Sanchez, Erin Stearns, Phillip Takahashi

Aerospace Engineering

This project reviews the design, manufacturing and experimentation process of a green bi-propellant thruster designed to output 5 lbf. The goals were to successfully design, manufacture and test a thruster, while discovering the complications that arise through out the complete design process of a green thruster. The thruster was successfully designed using ideal rocket equations and the design was successfully confirmed using CFD and FEA. Manufacturing of the thruster was fully planned and revealed mild flaws in thruster design. For example some features were not manufacturable to the exact measurements desired. Testing of the engine gave results inconsistent with expected …


Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of An Electromagnetic Rail Gun For The Repeated Testing And Simulation Of Orbital Debris Impacts, Jeff Maniglia, Jordan Smiroldo, Alex Westfall, Guy Zohar Jun 2011

Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of An Electromagnetic Rail Gun For The Repeated Testing And Simulation Of Orbital Debris Impacts, Jeff Maniglia, Jordan Smiroldo, Alex Westfall, Guy Zohar

Aerospace Engineering

An Electromagnetic Railgun (EMRG) was designed, built, and tested, capable of firing a projectile a 1 gram projectile at 650 m/s muzzle velocity. The EMRG utilizes an injector, a high voltage power supply, a capacitor bank, inductors and rails. The injector fires 2300 psig Nitrogen gas into the system to provide an initial velocity. The high voltage power supply charges the capacitor bank. The capacitor bank discharges the electric potential built up through the projectile while inside the rails in order to create the EMRG’s force. The inductors are used to pulse form the capacitor bank in order to get …