Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Spacecraft Informatics, K. L. Yung, Lida Xu, Chris Zhang

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Molten Regolith Electrolysis Processing For Lunar Isru: Financial And Physics Analysis Of Spacex Starship Transportation, Cheyenne Harper

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of the following research is to explore molten regolith electrolysis (MRE) methodology for in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) of Highlands lunar regolith, to be explored during the initial Artemis missions. An analysis of potential commercial launch providers for MRE-equipment based on technology-readiness level (TRL), payload mass support, and $ USD/kg payload price is provided. SpaceX is ultimately proposed as a launch provider of MRE equipment following multi-factorial analysis, with the SpaceX Starship human landing system (HLS) variant proposed for supporting MRE payload. Finally, customers of regolith-derived oxygen, aluminum, and silicon are distinguished to form the business case for operating …

A Finite Difference Model For Induced Hypothermia During Shock, Dylan S. Lyon

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The modified Fiala model from Westin was implemented with conditions for circulatory shock and hypothermia. The purpose is to model Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation (EPR), a procedure for inducing hypothermia in patients. Cold tissue temperatures reduce metabolism exponentially, greatly extending the window of anaerobic metabolic activity before permanent deoxygenation damage. EPR in patients undergoing hypovolemic shock can preserve the patient until primary surgical care and blood transfusions are attainable., thereby increasing survival rates. The main applications of EPR are military in-situ stabilization for transit to clinical care and extending the survivability of patients requiring prolonged surgery before blood transfusion. The …

Computational Studies For Extending Understanding Of Complex Droplet Breakup Mechanisms, Caroline Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Conventional methods of classifying droplet breakup are evaluated in the context of unique variation in environmental and droplet fluid conditions. Most characterization is developed for subsonic speeds and Newtonian fluids, so this study extends understanding on how these forms change to a span of applications outside these conditions. Presented examples include the impact effects on hypersonic vehicles travelling through precipitation, where even smallest of rain drops at such speeds can cause damage. Before the droplet even reaches the vehicle, it interacts with the detached bow shock that leads it. Another example of exceptional recent concern is risk of viral transmission …

Simulating Ejecta Blown Off The Lunar Surface Due To Landing Spacecraft Using The Mercury N-Body Integrator, Isabel Rivera

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The experiences of the Apollo lunar landings revealed the danger lunar dust can pose to surrounding hardware, outposts, and orbiting spacecraft. Future lunar missions such as the Artemis program will require more information about the trajectories of ejecta blown by landers to protect orbiting spacecraft such as the Lunar Gateway. In this paper, we simulate lunar lander ejecta trajectories using the Mercury N-body integrator. We placed cones of test particles on the Moon at the North Pole, South Pole, and Equator with various ejection speeds and angles. The results show that particles ejected at speeds near the Moon's escape velocity …

Experimental Study Of A Liquid Fuel Bluff Body Flame At Elevated Pressures, Karam Paul

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this research was to operate a bluff body flame holder with the objective of stabilizing a flame at elevated pressures over a range of equivalence ratios. The ability to have a ground-based test rig capable of maintaining stable flames at high pressures and temperatures is critical in understanding flames present in modern jet engines and gas turbine technologies. The facility was reconfigured multiple times and the resultant flame was imaged within the optical test section. A converging nozzle was utilized to choke the flow and vary the operating pressures up to 5 atm. By regulating mass flow …

Motor Control System For Near-Resonance High-Cycle Fatigue Testing, Samer K. Armaly

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research project develops a low-cost high-cycle fatigue (HCF) testing system comprised of an AC motor, variable frequency drive (VFD), eccentric cam, and feedback controller. The system acts as a forced harmonic oscillator leveraging mechanical resonance to vibrate a specimen at a frequency required to induce the testing's strain amplitudes.

This system depends highly on the material being tested. As such, the controller incorporates material characteristics. A frequency sweep measures the strain amplitude to characterize the specimen. Additionally, other measurements such as acceleration can be used as a proxy control variables for strain. A function converts the control variable to …

Optimization Of A Wing Supporting A Coaxial Rotor For Multiple Flight Conditions, Tadd Yeager

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Rotor-powered drones continue to grow in popularity in private and government sectors. The use of these drones in challenging environments and in high stakes applications calls for a certain level of robustness and redundancy. Often, these drones are equipped with sets of paired coaxial rotors, which not only improve the performance of the vehicle, but also ensure that a failure of one motor does not constitute the failure of the whole vehicle. Some applications such as extraterrestrial exploration, which use these coaxial rotors, can benefit from a wing shaped rotor arm to reduce drag and increase lift, extending mission lifetime. …

Design Of A Laboratory Annular Combustor, Sathish Dharmalingam, Kartik Dolarkumar Kothari

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Combustion lies at the heart of gas turbine technology. The combustor is the power source that aids the acceleration of flight. It provides the core functionality of adding heat through the controlled burn of the air-fuel mixture, converted into mechanical energy with the help of turbines. This extracted power has been used to produce thrust in the case of aircraft or to produce electrical energy in the case of industrial gas turbines. Designing an annular combustor involves a rigorous iterative process, and there is no systematic procedure available to design a small-scale laboratory combustor, used for research and academic purposes. …

Aerothermal Uncertainty Quantification Of Deployable Entry Technologies Using Multi-Fidelity Modeling, Mario Santos, Serhat Hosder, Thomas K. West

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The objective of this work was to investigate the use of a co-Kriging based multi-fidelity modeling approach with a Monte Carlo uncertainty quantification analyses of surface heating on hypersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator vehicles and adaptable, deployable entry placement technology vehicles in Mars entry. A previously developed co-Kriging based multi-fidelity modeling approach was used to model the laminar and turbulent convective and radiative heat fluxes along the vehicle. Monte Carlo analyses of surface heat load for nine different vehicle nose radii was performed for both vehicles, assuming the same thermal protection system is used for both vehicles. The maximum heat loads …

Efficient Solution Of Surface Erosion In Particle-Laden Hypersonic Flows, Andrew Hinkle, Serhat Hosder, Christopher Johnston

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The standard approach for simulating hypersonic dust erosion problems using mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian two-phase solvers is too computationally expensive for routine simulations, and particularly for uncertainty quantification (UQ) analyses. To enable these analyses, a new approach for solving this problem with a sparse set of particles is presented and demonstrated on a problem from literature involving the ExoMars Schiaparelli entry vehicle. This new approach, referred to here as the Trajectory Control Volume (TCV) method is verified against traditional approaches based on Monte Carlo, and is shown to require over 3 orders-of-magnitude less samples to obtain the same results. An example UQ …

Modeling Rack Force For Steering Maneuvers In A Stationary Vehicle, Nilay Kant, Raunav Chitkara, Prerit Pramod

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A steering system converts circular motion of the steering wheel into yaw motion of the road-wheels. In absence of a steering assist mechanism, the driver torque overcomes the tire-road friction forces, which is transmitted to the steering rack through tie rods attached to the road-wheels. The net force acting on the rack is then transmitted to the steering wheel through mechanical linkages which results in natural haptic feedback, commonly referred to as the steering feel. In an electric/hydraulic power steering, an electro-mechanical actuator applies assist force, which reduces the torque required by the driver. In order to maintain stability of …

Novel Adaptive Sampling Algorithm For Pod-Based Non-Intrusive Reduced Order Model, Jiachen Wang, Xiaosong Du, Joaquim R.R.A. Martins

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) based reduced-order model (ROM) has been an effective tool for flow field prediction in the engineering industry. The sample selection in the design space for POD basis construction affects the ROM performance sensitively. Adaptive sampling can significantly reduce the number of samples to achieve the required model accuracy. In this work, we propose a novel adaptive sampling algorithm, called conjunction sampling strategy, which is based on proven strategies. The conjunction sampling strategy is demonstrated on airfoil flow field prediction within the transonic regime. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed strategy by running 10 trials …

A Convolutional Neural Network Model Based On Multiscale Structural Similarity For The Prediction Of Flow Fields, Yifu An, Xiaosong Du, Joaquim R.R.A. Martins

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We have seen the emerging applications of deep neural networks for flow field predictions in the past few years. Most of the efforts rely on the increased complexity of the model itself or take advantage of novel network architectures, such as convolutional neural networks (CNN). However, reaching low prediction error cannot guarantee the quality of the predicted flow fields in terms of the perceived visual quality. This work introduces the multi-scale structural similarity (MS-SSIM) index method for flow field prediction. First, we train CNN models using the commonly used root mean squared error (RMSE) loss function as the reference. Then …

Development Of Multi-Scale Characterization Techniques For Stress Corrosion Cracking Of Aerospace Alloys, Nicholas Reed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Corrosion presents an inherent challenge in the safe and effective use of metallic aerospace structures for extended periods of time. Progress in the fundamental understanding of corrosion initiation and propagation under stress requires a multi-scale approach that leverages experiments to develop predictive models. Although there exists a large amount of research results tracking the corrosive processes of anodic dissolution and hydrogen embrittlement, the amount of available data and modeling of the micro-scale initiation of corrosion is sparse. This work leverages a suite of characterization techniques to systematically analyze an aerospace grade aluminum alloy AA7075-T6, providing important multi-scale data for correlation …

Non-Equilibrium Behavior Of Large-Scale Axial Vortex Cores, Robert L. Ash, Irfan R. Zardadkhan

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

A logical basis for incorporating pressure non-equilibrium and turbulent eddy viscosity in an incompressible vortex model is presented. The infrasonic acoustic source implied in our earlier work has been examined. Finally, this non-equilibrium turbulent vortex core is shown to dissipate mechanical energy more slowly than a Burgers vortex, helping us to explain the persistence of axial vortices in nature. Recent molecular dynamics simulations replicate aspects of this non-equilibrium pressure behavior.

Analysis Of 30°-90° Blended Winglet Additions To Cessna 172, Piper Malibu, And Boeing 737 Wings, John Crowe, Fernando Ramos

NSF REU: Propulsion, Aerodynamics & Controls of Aerial Vehicles (2021)

The objective of this research is to determine the effect of different cant angle winglet additions to multiple types of aircraft throughout various angles of attack. The winglet design to be studied is the blended winglet. Its cant angle is altered to be 30, 60, and 90 degrees. Three different wings were chosen to be modeled and simulated, each with different geometry to attempt to encompass a wide range of wing types. The three wings were a rectangular wing, a tapered wing, and a swept wing. Those models are represented by the Cessna 172, Piper PA-46, and the Boeing 737-300, …

Simulation Of A Trailing Edge Flap Using A Compliant Mechanism, Sam Blackwell

Summer Community of Scholars Posters (RCEU and HCR Combined Programs)

No abstract provided.

Parallel Anisotropic Unstructured Grid Adaptation, Christos Tsolakis, Nikos Chrisochoides, Michael A. Park, Adrien Loseille, Todd Michal

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has become critical to the design and analysis of aerospace vehicles. Parallel grid adaptation that resolves multiple scales with anisotropy is identified as one of the challenges in the CFD Vision 2030 Study to increase the capacity and capability of CFD simulation. The study also cautions that computer architectures are undergoing a radical change, and dramatic increases in algorithm concurrency will be required to exploit full performance. This paper reviews four different methods to parallel anisotropic grid adaptation. They cover both ends of the spectrum: 1) using existing state-of-the-art software optimized for a single core and …

Mechanical Properties Of Nanomodified Hybrid Gfrp Composite Materials, Micah Rop Kimutai

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The mechanical behavior of the nanomodified hybrid epoxy matrix was investigated in glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP). In this study, five nanocomposites enriched with as received halloysite, nanomer I.28E, HNT-APTES, and the hybrid combinations of the two HNTs with the nanomer I.28E were successfully fabricated. To evaluate the effects and morphological characteristics of the individual fillers and the hybrid configurations on the epoxy resin matrix, TGA, DSC, and DMA were analyzed. To understand the effect of the five configurations on the neat GFRP laminate, mode I interlaminar fracture toughness, tensile, and vibration properties were investigated. Electron microscopy testing techniques were …