Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Parameterized Least-Squares Attitude History Estimation And Magnetic Field Observations Of The Auroral Spatial Structures Probe, Ryan J. Martineau

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As charged particles from the Sun enter the Earth’s atmosphere and create the aurora borealis (Northern lights) and aurora australis (Southern lights), energy is transferred to the atmosphere. In order to better understand the energy transfer processes, the Auroral Spatial Structures Probe rocket was launched to make measurements in the active aurora. Several payloads were deployed by the rocket, each with sensors to measure the magnetic field and the electric field so that the way they change over time and in different positions could be observed. The measurements require accurate knowledge of the spacecraft orientation, and to that end this …

Direct Electrical Arc Ignition Of Hybrid Rocket Motors, Michael I. Judson Jr.

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Hybrid rockets motors provide distinct safety advantages when compared to traditional liquid or solid propellant systems, due to the inherent stability and relative inertness of the propellants prior to established combustion. As a result of this inherent propellant stability, hybrid motors have historically proven difficult to ignite. State of the art hybrid igniter designs continue to require solid or liquid reactants distinct from the main propellants. These ignition methods however, reintroduce to the hybrid propulsion system the safety and complexity disadvantages associated with traditional liquid or solid propellants. The results of this study demonstrate the feasibility of a novel direct …

High Regression Rate Hybrid Rocket Fuel Grains With Helical Port Structures, Sean D. Walker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Hybrid Rockets are popular in the aerospace industry due to their storage safety, simplicity, and controllability during rocket motor burn. However, they produce fuel regression rates typically 25% lower than solid fuel motors of the same thrust level. These lowered regression rates produce unacceptably high oxidizer-to-fuel (O/F) ratios that produce a potential for motor instability, nozzle erosion, and reduced motor duty cycles. To achieve O/F ratios that produce acceptable combustion charactersitics, traditional cylindrical fuel ports are fabricated with very long length-to-diameter ratios to increase the total burning area. these high aspect ratios produce further reduced fuel regression rate and trust …

A Neural Network Approach To Fault Detection In Spacecraft Attitude Determination And Control Systems, John N. Schreiner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

CubeSats are employed in a variety of missions as scientific platforms, low-cost technology demonstrators, and in the future, they will conduct service missions as part of larger satellite constellations. CubeSat ADCS designers today are being tasked with designing to ever increasing accuracy requirements. The ability to hold those requirements rests with the attitude control system being robust enough and able to sufficiently respond to changes in the control environment. The need for greater control autonomy is then evident in the need for these systems to be able to react independently to changes in the system dynamics and to identify and …

Experimental Investigation Of Drag Reduction By Trailing Edge Tabs On A Square Based Bluff Body In Ground Effect, Scott R. Sawyer

Master's Theses

This thesis presents an experimental investigation of drag reduction devices on a bluff body in ground effect. It has previously been shown that the addition of end-plate tabs to a rectangular based bluff body with an aspect ratio of 4 is effective in eliminating vortex shedding and reducing drag for low Reynolds number flows. In the present study a square based bluff body, both with and without tabs, will be tested under the same conditions, except this time operating within proximity to a ground plane in order to mimic the properties of bounded aerodynamics that would be present for a …

Mapping Regional Inundation With Spaceborne L-Band Sar, Bruce Chapman, Kyle Macdonald, Masanobu Shimada, Ake Rosenqvist, Ronny Schroeder, Laura Hess

Publications and Research

Shortly after the launch of ALOS PALSAR L-band SAR by the Japan Space Exploration Agency (JAXA), a program to develop an Earth Science Data Record (ESDR) for inundated wetlands was funded by NASA. Using established methodologies, extensive multi-temporal L-band ALOS ScanSAR data acquired bi-monthly by the PALSAR instrument onboard ALOS were used to classify the inundation state for South America for delivery as a component of this Inundated Wetlands ESDR (IW-ESDR) and in collaboration with JAXA’s ALOS Kyoto and Carbon Initiative science programme. We describe these methodologies and the final classification of the inundation state, then compared this with results …

Investigations Of Synthetic Fuels: S8 And Sasol Ipk To Determine The Possibility Of Alternate Fuels In The Aerospace Industry, Scott M. Dyke

GS4 Student Scholars Symposium

Investigations of Synthetic Fuels: S8 and Sasol IPK to Determine the Possibility of Operation as Alternate Fuels in the Aerospace Industry

Name: Scott Dyke

Co-Authors: Martin Muinos, Julia Heimberger, Dr. Valentin Soloiu,

An ever-growing society that becomes more and more dependent on a finite energy source will eventually exceed its supply. Fossil fuel quantities are continuously decreasing and new solutions are needed. According to the United States Department of Transportation, over 10 billion gallons of airline fuels have been consumed in each of the past 15 years with some years over 13 billion gallons. In the meantime, fuel costs have …

Design And Analysis Of A Labview And Arduino-Based Automatic Solar Tracking System, Caiwen Ding

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the College of Science and Technology Morehead State University in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Science by Caiwen Ding April 24, 2015

Simulation Of Complex Ionic Liquid Ionization Process, Forrest Grady Kidd Iii

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

The future of satellites will require dual-mode propulsion to obtain dynamic orbits. One set of propellants capable of dual-mode propulsion are ionic liquids. These energy-dense liquids have similar thrust characteristics to SOTA monopropellants and low vapor pressures making them safer to handle. That low vapor pressure makes ionization more difficult as it requires the propellant to be in a gaseous state. This requires experiments to determine how to efficently vaporize and ionize this propellant. Computational modelling is needed to guide these experiments and to develop simulations that can extrapolate the data to more complex geometries.

Unstandard Cubesat/Pocketqube/Tubesat Deployers, Robert J. Twiggs

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint presentation created by Professor Bob Twiggs titled "Unstandard CubeSat/PocketQube/TubeSat Deployers" from April 23, 2015.

A Radio Frequency Beacon Receiver For Detection Of Ionospheric Scintillation, Tim Neilsen, Don Thompson, Steve Higley, Todd Parris, Jake Gunther

Space Dynamics Laboratory Publications

Radio Frequency Beacon Receiver

• What is RFBR?
• A low-cost, ground-based beacon receiver
• Producing ionospheric parameters:
• Total Electron Content (TEC) 
• Amplitude scintillation (S4)
• Phase scintillation (σ_φ)
• Using COTS RF hardware and Software Defined Radios (SDRs) 
• Advanced algorithms and software

Flying The X-15 And Space Shuttle, Joe H. Engle

ERAU Prescott Aviation History Program

Hear what it was like for Joe H. Engle, USAF/ANG, Ret. to fly both the X-15 and the Space Shuttle. In 1965 Capt. Engle flew the X-15 to 280,600 feet, to become the youngest pilot to qualify as an astronaut and would go on to fly it 15 more times. Selected for NASA space missions, he flew the Space Shuttle “Enterprise” off the top of a modified 747 on glide flight tests. He commanded the orbital test flight of “Columbia” and became the first and only pilot to manually fly an aerospace vehicle from Mach 25 to landing. A remarkable …

Cdtx: Cool Drop Test Experiment, Robert J. Twiggs

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint presentation created by Professor Bob Twiggs titled "CDTX: Cool Drop Test Experiment" from April 7, 2015.

Slip Length Crossover On A Graphene Surface, Zhi Liang, Pawel Keblinski

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Using Equilibrium and Non-Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics Simulations, We Study the Flow of Argon Fluid above the Critical Temperature in a Planar Nanochannel Delimited by Graphene Walls. We Observe that, as a Function of Pressure, the Slip Length First Decreases Due to the Decreasing Mean Free Path of Gas Molecules, Reaches the Minimum Value When the Pressure is Close to the Critical Pressure, and Then Increases with Further Increase in Pressure. We Demonstrate that the Slip Length Increase at High Pressures is Due to the Fact that the Viscosity of Fluid Increases Much Faster with Pressure Than the Friction Coefficient between …

High Powered Composite Payload Fairing Rocket For Deployable Robotics, Markus R. Murdy

Research Horizons Day Posters

No abstract provided.

Comparison Of Radiation Dosage For Human Piloted Mars Missions Using Chemical, Nuclear Thermal, And Fusion Propulsion Systems, Steven Doyle

Research Horizons Day Posters

No abstract provided.

Flow Induced Vibration On Piezoelectric Structures: Prediction, Experiment And Applications, Felix Ewere

Research Horizons Day Posters

No abstract provided.

Particulate Matter Emission Estimates From Agricultural Spring Tillage Operations Using Lidar And Inverse Modeling, Kori D. Moore, Michael D. Wojcik, Randal S. Martin, Christian C. Marchant, Derek S. Jones, William J. Bradford, Gail E. Bingham, Richard L. Pfeiffer, John H. Prueger, Jerry L. Hatfield

Space Dynamics Laboratory Publications

Particulate matter (PM) emissions from a typical spring agricultural tillage sequence and a strip-till conservation tillage sequence in California’s San Joaquin Valley were estimated to calculate the emissions control efficiency (η) of the strip-till conservation management practice (CMP). Filter-based PM samplers, PM-calibrated optical particle counters (OPCs), and a PM-calibrated light detection and ranging (lidar) system were used to monitored upwind and downwind PM concentrations. Emission rates were estimated through inverse modeling coupled with the filter and OPC measurements and through applying a mass balance to the PM concentrations derived from lidar data. Sampling irregularities and errors prevented the estimation of …

Morris Leroy Spearman

Virginia Journal of Science

Obituary for Morris Leroy Spearman

Delamination Of C/Pekk I-Beam Using Virtual Crack Closure Technique And Cohesive Zone Method, Greeshma Ramakrishna

Open Access Theses

A damage study is conducted on a carbon epoxy/PEKK (poly-ether-ketone-ketone) thermoplastic composite I-Beam, with a pre crack of 100 mm modeled between the top flange and the filler (butt joint between filler and web). This project is in collaboration with Fokker Aerostructures, Netherlands and is part of the Thermoplastic Primary Aircraft Structure innovation program (TAPAS). The C/PEKK I-Beam is modeled after a section of the Gulfstream G650 aircraft's centre beam, which was previously a carbon fiber/epoxy hat-stiffened skin construction. The objective of the thesis is to identify if the crack propagates in the I-Beam within the load range that act …