Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Day/Night Band Imager For A Cubesat, Eric Stanton

Electrical Engineering

Day/Night Band (DNB) earth sensing and meteorological systems like the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS) provide visible wavelength imagery 24 hours a day that is used primarily for cloud imaging in support of weather forecasting. This paper describes a compact push-broom imager that meets low light imaging requirements for DMSP OLS and the NOAA/NASA Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) as documented in the Integrated Operational Requirements Document [1] (IORD) including the imager design, system level concepts of operation for data collection, radiometric and spatial calibration, and data transmission to Earth. This small, lightweight imager complies with …

An Experimental Investigation Of Glare And Restructured Fiber Metal Laminates, Adelina Vanessa Benedict

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Fiber Metal Laminates (FMLs) are a group of materials fabricated by bonding glass/epoxy layers within metal layers. This class of materials can provide good mechanical properties, as well as weight savings. An FML known as Glass Laminate Aluminum Reinforced Epoxy (GLARE) was studied. An experimental investigation comprising of microscopy and tensile testing was carried out using different grades of GLARE. Microscopy revealed the construction details of GLARE, while tensile testing provided means of measuring and analyzing its stress-strain responses. Next, different metal surface pretreatment methods were explored. These included sandblasting, Phosphoric Acid Anodizing (PAA), and AC-130 Sol-Gel treatment. Woven S-2 …

Modal Analysis Of Composite Structures With Damping Material, Kellie Michelle Tremaine

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study is to develop an analytical solution for modal analysis of actively damped orthotropic composite plates in bending and to verify it with experimental analysis.

The analytical modal analysis solution for composite plate dynamics is derived using Euler theory. This analysis applies to structures with orthotropic lamina of uniform material properties at any lamination angle. The bending-extensional coupling can be neglected for plates that are symmetric or approximately symmetric, which allows an exact solution for natural frequency and mode shape to be obtained. An exact solution can be found for natural vibration and in general.

The …

Implementation Of A ¼ Inch Hollow Cathode Into A Miniature Xenon Ion Thruster (Mixi), David Wayne Knapp

Master's Theses

Over the last decade, miniature ion thruster development has remained an active area of research do to its low power, low thrust, and high efficiency, however, due to several technical issues; a flight level miniature ion thruster has proved elusive. This thesis covers the design, fabrication, assembly, and test of an altered version of the Miniature Xenon Ion thruster (MiXI), originally developed by lead engineer Dr. Richard Wirz, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In collaboration with Dr. Wirz, MiXI-CP-V3 was developed at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with the goal of implementing of a ¼ inch hollow cathode …

Hapss, Hybrid Aircraft Propulsion System Synthesis, Michael W. Green

Master's Theses

Hybrid Aircraft Propulsion System Synthesis (HAPSS) is a computer program that sizes and analyzes pure-series hybrid electric propulsion systems for aircraft. The development of this program began during a NASA SBIR contract, in conjunction with Empirical Systems Aerospace (ESAero), with the creation of a propulsion fan design tool. Since the completion of this contract in July 2010, the HAPSS program has been expanded to combine the many aspects of a hybrid propulsion system such as the propulsive fans, electric motors, generators, and controllers, and the internal combustion engines.

This thesis describes the benefits and drawbacks of aircraft hybrid propulsion systems …

Flying Qualities Built-In-Test For Unmanned Aerial Systems, Alton Pak-Hin Chiu

Master's Theses

This paper presents a flying qualities built-in-test for UAS application with the scope limited to the longitudinal axis. A doublet input waveform excites the AV and both α and q are used by EUDKF to estimate the A and B matrices which are short period approximations of the system. ζ, ω, GM, PM, observability, and controllability are calculated to determine flying qualities with the results displayed to the AVO in a color-coded, easy to interpret display.

While SID algorithms have been flying in vehicles with adaptive control schemes, vehicles with other schemes (such as classical feedback) lack this built-in self …

Activity Node Based Flight Software As A Benefit To Systems Engineering, Eugene Daniel Lewis

Master's Theses

This report discusses one application of a flight software design for a spacecraft in which the software executes from a database that can be managed by systems engineering. This report gives an overview of how such a software design can be developed and implemented. It also discusses why this approach is beneficial to the systems engineering program.

Cubesat Mission Planning Toolbox, Brian Castello

Master's Theses

We are in an era of massive spending cuts in educational institutions, aerospace companies and governmental entities. Educational institutions are pursuing more training for less money, aerospace companies are reducing the cost of gaining ight heritage and the government is cutting budgets and their response times. Organizations are accomplishing this improved efficiency by moving away from large-scale satellite projects and developing pico and nanosatellites following the CubeSat specifications. One of the major challenges of developing satellites to the standard CubeSat mission requirements is meeting the exceedingly tight power, data and communication constraints.

A MATLAB toolbox was created to assist the …

Reliable Software Updates For On-Orbit Cubesat Satellites, Sean Fitzsimmons

Master's Theses

CubeSat satellites have redefined the standard solution for conducting missions in space due to their unique form factor and cost. The harsh environment of space necessitates examining features that improve satellite robustness and ultimately extend lifetime, which is typical and vital for mission success. The CubeSat development team at Cal Poly, PolySat, has recently redefined its standard avionics platform to support more complex mission capabilities with this robustness in mind. A significant addition was the integration of the Linux operating system, which provides the flexibility to develop much more elaborate protection mechanisms within software, such as support for remote on-orbit …

Feasibility Study Into The Use Of 3d Printed Materials In Cubesat Flight Missions, Daniel Fluitt

Master's Theses

The CubeSat Program has provided access to space for many universities, private companies, and government institutions primarily due to the low cost of CubeSat satellite development. While these costs are orders of magnitude lower than similarly capable nano-satellite missions, they are still outside of the budgetary constraints of many potential developers including university and high school clubs. Using 3D printed plastics in the production of CubeSat structures and mechanisms presents a large cost savings opportunity that will allow these institutions to participate in the development of these satellites, expanding the educational and scientific impact of the CubeSat Program.

Five rapid …

An Investigation Of Damage Arrestment Devices On Carbon Fiber Sandwich Specimens Under Dynamic Loading, Gabriel Sabino Sanchez

Master's Theses

This research studies the effects of a damage arrestment device embedded between a carbon fiber facesheet and foam core to find whether there is an increase in the structural integrity of the sandwich composites. Experimental and theoretical finite element analyses are implemented for two different composite sandwich geometries; plates and beams. Each structure consisted of the same loading criteria and was restricted to the same vibration fixture during the experiment. An accelerometer was placed on the composite plate to record the amplitude and the natural frequencies of the composite structure. Each composite specimen is then fixed to the surface of …

Numerical Investigation Of Highly Curved Turbulent Flows In Centrifugal Compressors And In A Simplified Geometry, Kevin J. Elliott

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Curvature effects are investigated in terms of a recently developed curvature corrected turbulence model in turbomachinery applications. Two centrifugal compressor stages and a curved geometry modelled after a centrifugal impeller are simulated using the curvature corrected SST (SST-CC) turbulence model. This work improves the understanding of how the SST-CC model predicts curvature effects. An analysis of the SST-CC production multiplier in both centrifugal cases reveals that the model is appropriately accounting for curvature effects, showing increased production near concave surfaces and decreased production near convex surfaces. This correlates well with the simplified geometry results and demonstrates that the simplified geometry …

Multi-Tier Exploration Concept Demonstration Mission, Jeremy Straub

Jeremy Straub

A multi-tier, multi-craft mission architecture has been proposed but, despite its apparent promise, limited use and testing of the architecture has been conducted. This paper proposes and details a mission concept and its implementation for testing this architecture in the terrestrial environment. It is expected that this testing will allow significant refinement of the proposed architecture as well as providing data on its suitability for use in both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial applications. Logistical and technical challenges with this testing are discussed.

Humanitarian Response Unmanned Aircraft System (Hr-Uas), Justin T. Knott, David P. Brundage, John S. Campbell, D. Austin Eldridge, Shaun B. Hooker, Jake R. Mashburn, Jacob L. Philpott

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Analysis And Testing Of Heat Transfer Through Honeycomb Panels, Daniel D. Nguyen

Aerospace Engineering

This project attempts to simulate accurately the thermal conductivity of honeycomb panels in the normal direction. Due to the large empty space of the honeycomb core, the thermal radiation mode of heat transfer was modeled along with conduction. Using Newton’s Method to solve for a steady state model of heat moving through the honeycomb panel, the theoretical effective thermal conduction of the honeycomb panel was found, ranging from 1.03 to 1.07 Q/m/K for a heat input of 2.5 W to 11.8 W. An experimental model was designed to test the theoretical results, using a cold plate and a heat plate …

Design Of Orbital Maneuvers With Aeroassisted Cubesatellites, Stephanie Clark

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent advances within the field of cube satellite technology has allowed for the possible development of a maneuver that utilizes a satellite's Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and increased atmospheric density to effectively use lift and drag to implement a noncoplanar orbital maneuver. Noncoplanar maneuvers typically require large quantities of propellant due to the large delta-v that is required. However, similar maneuvers using perturbing forces require little or no propellant to create the delta-v required. This research reported here studied on the effects of lift on orbital changes, those of noncoplanar types in particular, for small satellites without orbital maneuvering thrusters. …

Cubesats: A Low-Cost, Very High-Return Space Technology, Jeremy Straub

Jeremy Straub

No abstract provided.

Heat, Mass And Force Flows In Supersonic Shockwave Interactions, John Michael Dixon

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

There is no cost effective way to deliver a payload to space and, with rising fuel prices, currently the price to travel commercially is also becoming more prohibitive to the public. During supersonic flight, compressive shock waves form around the craft which could be harnessed to deliver an additional lift on the craft. Using a series of hanging plates below a lifting wing design, the total lift generated can be increased above conventional values, while still maintaining a similar lift-to-drag ratio. Here, we study some of the flows involved in supersonic shockwave interaction. This analysis uses ANSYS Fluent Computational Fluid …

Reduction Of Solid-Solid Thermal Boundary Resistance By Inserting An Interlayer, Zhi Liang, Hai-Lung Tsai

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An Effective Method is Proposed to Greatly Improve the Thermal Transport Across the Interface between Two Solids with Dissimilar Phonon Spectra. If the Two Solids Have Similar Crystal Structure and Lattice Constant, It is Predicted from the Molecular Dynamics Modeling that an over 50% Reduction of the Thermal Boundary Resistance Can Be Achieved by Inserting a 3-Unit-Cell-Thick Interlayer Whose Debye Temperature is Approximately the Square Root of the Product of the Debye Temperatures of the Two Solids. on the Other Hand, If the Two Solids Have a Large Difference in Lattice Constant, It is Found the Interfacial Atomic Restructuring Plays …

Effective Thermal Conductivity Of Tri-Isotropic (Triso) Fuel Compacts, Charles P. Folsom

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) program objective is to develop a new type of nuclear reactor that produces process heat instead of electricity. The process heat can be used in the production of hydrogen and many other industrial processes. As part of the NGNP program a new type of nuclear fuel is being developed. The fuel is a composite construction of specially coated fuel particles and graphite pressed together in a cylindrical compact.

Thermal conductivity is an important thermophysical property of the fuel that needs to be measured. Knowledge of the thermal conductivity of the fuel will provide accurate …