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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering
A Systematic Study Into The Design And Utilization Of Burn Wire As A Means Of Tensioning And Releasing Spacecraft Mechanisms Through Applied Joule Heating, Chandler Dye
Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses
The joule heating characteristics of Nichrome burn wires, often used as a thermal cutting device in mechanisms designed to fasten and release CubeSat deployables, are examined in the following thesis. Wires ranging from 0.125 inches to 2 inches long, and diameters of 30 Ga and 40 Ga, are investigated through analytical calculations and thermal simulations based on heat transfer due to joule heating, and through physical circuitry-based experiments. The temperature data is used to generate heating curves to predict the time it takes for Nichrome wires to fail under varying testing parameters. This research aims to catalog a series of …
Active Permanent Magnet Attitude Control For Cubesats Using Mu-Metal Shielding, Maxwell Martin
Active Permanent Magnet Attitude Control For Cubesats Using Mu-Metal Shielding, Maxwell Martin
Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses
Cube-Satellites (CubeSats) are nanosatellites composed of cube shaped units, each nominally 10cm to a side and around 1kg in mass. Due to their inherent size and weight limitations, it is often impractical to use conventional attitude, or rotational, control methods such as thrusters on these small satellites. Several methods, including magnetorquer rods and small reaction wheels, are often used instead of traditional methods to work around the size and weight limitations. As a new alternative to these methods, a permanent magnet mounted on a rotatable shaft could be used to achieve attitude control. In much the same way that a …