Other Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

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

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 …

Electric Aircraft Propulsion Test Rig Design & Fabrication, Ryan Mayer, Brian Kubicki, Bradley Rodriguez, Austin Harris, David Caudle

Aerospace Engineering

An electric aircraft propulsion test rig was designed and fabricated to predict thrust, torque and battery discharge profiles for an electric aircraft. The original unit was purchased from ElectraFlyer and included the DC brushless motor, carbon fiber propeller, charger, electronic controller and lithium polymer batteries. Various components were constructed and purchased in order to fabricate the optimal test rig apparatus. This apparatus allows for simultaneous measurement of the torque and thrust of the system through the use of a biaxial sensor. The test rig also measures system voltage and current, which allows the user to determine the discharge profile of …

An Investigation Of Dynamic Soaring And Its Applications To The Albatross And Rc Sailplanes, Christopher J. Lee

Aerospace Engineering

Dynamic soaring is a technique used by the sea bird the Albatross. This technique allows for the bird to stay in the air for extended periods of time with very little effort. Dynamic soaring utilizes the wind gradient on the surface of the ocean to maintain its airspeed. A similar technique is used by RC glider pilots to achieve high speeds by using the shear wind layer on the leeward side of mountain ridges.

Cal Poly Human Powered Helicopter, Josiah Auer, Eric Behne, Dave Berry, Rebecca Hennings, James Koch, Ian Marquardt, Josiah Mayfield, Sean Miller

Mechanical Engineering

The following report encompasses the Cal Poly Human Powered Helicopter team’s efforts during the 2010-2011 academic year. The intention of this project is to further the knowledge of human powered helicopter design and to validate an ideal configuration through experimental tests and analysis. 

A. Background

The Sikorsky Prize offered by the American Helicopter Society has been the catalyst for many attempts at Human Powered Helicopter (HPH) flight. The requirement to win the prize is a continuous, human powered flight of more than 60 seconds that stays within a 10 meter square box and reaches an altitude greater than 3 meters …

Designing The Human-Powered Helicopter: A New Perspective, Gregory Hamilton Gradwell

Master's Theses

The concept of human-powered vertical flight was studied in great depth. Through the manipulation of preexisting theory and analytical methods, a collection of design tools was created to expediently conceptualize and then analyze virtually any rotor. The tools were then arranged as part of a complete helicopter rotor design process. The lessons learned as a result of studying this process—and the tools of which it consists—are presented in the following discussion. It is the belief of the author that by utilizing these tools, as well as the suggestions that accompany them, future engineers may someday build a human-powered helicopter capable …

Hybrid Rocket Based Combined Cycle Test Rig Design, Construction, And Testing, Mark Costa, Matthew Handfelt

Aerospace Engineering

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Maxus 8 Sounding Rocket Experiment To Investigate Solidification In A Ti-Al-Nb Alloy, Robin Mooney, David Browne, Olga Budenkova, Yves R. Fautrelle, Ludo Froyen, Andrey Kartavykh, Stephan Rex, Burkhard Schmitz, Daniella Voss, Shaun Mcfadden

Conference Papers

A review of the MAXUS 8 sounding rocket microgravity experiment to investigate solidification structures in a Ti-Al-Nb intermetallic alloy is presented. The experiment was part of the Intermetallic Materials Processing in Relation to Earth and Space Solidification (IMPRESS) EU FP6 project. Key objectives were to investigate columnar and equiaxed solidification, and to achieve Columnar-to-Equiaxed Transition (CET) in the alloy. A microgravity experiment was designed to achieve this using a controlled power-down method. Two alloys were tested: one inoculated with a grain refiner and the other without grain refinement. Unrefined samples displayed axial and radial columnar growth. Boride inoculated samples displayed …

Development Of A Laboratory Experiment To Simulate Upper-Stage Rocket Explosions, Timothy J. Price

Aerospace Engineering

This report is a summary of the senior project entitled Development of a Laboratory Experiment to Simulate Upper-Stage Rocket Explosions. The goal of the experiment was to recreate a NASA experiment which used aluminum soft drink cans to approximate the shape of an Ariane third stage rocket. The cans were placed in a vacuum chamber and fired upon with a projectile from a light gas gun. The resulting debris was collected and analyzed allowing several conclusions to be made regarding the behavior or rocket breakups and the formation of space debris. In lieu of a light gas gun, energy drink …

Primary And Secondary Flow Structures In A Model Cerebral Aneurysm, Morgan A. Nowak

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Cerebral aneurysms affect 5% of western populations and can cause morbidity and mortality if they rupture. Various treatments can be used to minimize the risk of rupture, with new diagnostics and treatments under development that require information from non-invasive techniques such as Particle Imaging Velocimetery (PIV). The current study focused on developing a setup as a basis for future experiments and work on intracranial aneurysms involving PIV. PIV experimentation and data collection were carried out during the summer of 2010 at Ohta Labs of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. The experimental setup consisted of a pulsatile flow system, which was …

Starting Cansat – Where To Now?, Robert J. Twiggs

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint presentation created by Professor Bob Twiggs titled "Starting CanSat – Where to Now?" from March 8, 2011.

The Future Of Cubesats: Presentation To The Iaa, Ben Malphrus

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint presentation created by Professor Bob Twiggs titled "The Future of CubeSats: Presentation to the IAA" from January 28, 2011.

Space Mission Engineering: The New Smad, James R. Wertz, David F. Everett, Jeffery J. Puschell

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint Presentation created by James Wertz, David Everett, and Jeffery J. Puschell on "Space Mission Engineering: The New SMAD" in 2011.

Flight Testing In A Simulation Based Environment, David W. Babka

Aerospace Engineering

Over the past two decades performance flight testing of full scale aircraft has transferred some of the testing workload to simulation based systems.  Flight testing full scale aircraft in the real world environment has always been expensive, especially now with the rise in aviation fuel costs. Additionally, new emerging technologies require extensive testing and doing so in the full scale environment is cost prohibitive.  A cheaper alternative is to test systems in a simulation based environment.  Not only can aircraft be simulated via a computer, but all the aircrafts systems can be modeled in the simulation.  Furthermore, most of the …

Citizen Satellites: Tiny, Standardized Spacecraft Are Making Orbital Experiments Affordable To Even The Smallest Research Groups, Robert J. Twiggs, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

An article written by Bob Twiggs and Alex Soojung-Kim Pang and published in the Scientific American titled "Citizen Satellites: Tiny, standardized spacecraft are making orbital experiments affordable to even the smallest research groups" from 2010.

Space Science Program: Spotlight Presentation To The Msu Board Of Regents, Robert J. Twiggs

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint Presentation created by Professor Bob Twiggs titled "Space Science Program: Spotlight Presentation to the MSU Board of Regents" from December 9, 2010.

The Weather Forecast Fortoday In Space!Exploring Our Space Environment & Satellite Orbits, Robert J. Twiggs

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint Presentation created by Professor Bob Twiggs titled "The Weather Forecast forToday in Space!Exploring our space environment & satellite orbits" from December 9, 2010.

Modeling And Preliminary Finite Element Analysis On The Spun Structure For The Cpintersep Project, Jason Carpenter, Kelly Cheng, Jeffrey Ma, Richard Pelham, Kevin Povey

Aerospace Engineering

This paper details the process of modeling and importing the model into FEA for the spun structure of the BS376 spacecraft. Engineering drawings were converted into 3D models using Pro/Engineer and then imported and into Patran for pre-processing of a Finite Element Model. To verify the Finite Element Model, several test cases were set up and solved using Nastran solver. Our simple load cases were found to be in congruence with analytical solution methods validating the finite element model.

A 24ft/7.3m Parabolic Reflector Antenna Performance & Feed Design Analysis, Anthony Shelley

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Science & Technology at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science by Anthony Shelley on November 29, 2010.

The Weather Forecast Fortoday In Space! Exploring Our Space Environment & Satellite Orbits, Robert J. Twiggs

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint presentation created by Professor Bob Twiggs titled "The Weather Forecast forToday in Space! Exploring our space environment & satellite orbits" from November 17, 2010.