Engineering Commons^™

Some Comments On The Protection Of Lunar Habitats Against Damage From Meteoroid Impacts, William P. Schonberg, F. Schäfer, R. Putzar

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The establishment of human habitats on the Moon and on Mars will require protecting them from the hazards of near-Earth and interplanetary space. in addition to solar radiation, another hazard to be faced by these habitats is the damage that can result from the high-speed impact of a meteoroid on a critical structural component. Therefore, lunar habitats and their accompanying support facilities need to be designed with adequate levels of protection that will allow them to also withstand the damage that can result from a meteoroid impact. in this paper we discuss some approaches to shielding for lunar habitats, focusing …

Thermal Robotic Arm Controlled Spraying Via Robotic Arm And Vision System, Dermot Breen

Doctoral

The Tribology Surface Engineering industry is a worldwide multi billion euro industry with significant health and safety risks. The thermal spraying sector of this industry employs the technique of applying molten surface coating material to a substrate via a thermal spray process which is implemented either by manual spraying or pre-programmed robotic systems. The development of autonomous robotic systems for thermal spraying surface coating would significantly improve production and profitability over pre-programmed systems and improve health and safety over manual spraying. The aim of this research was to investigate and develop through software simulation, physical modelling and testing the development …

Baffle Box Effectiveness Monitoring Report, Stormwater Academy

BMP Trains Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Updated Miscellaneous Electricity Loads And Appliance Energy Usage Profiles For Use In Home Energy Ratings, The Building America Benchmark And Related Calculations [Revised], Florida Solar Energy Center, Danny Parker

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This report addresses the ever increasing percentage of whole house energy use that is attributable to miscellaneous electricity loads (MELs) and major appliances. It builds on earlier U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reports on the same subject and incorporates the 2005 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) public use data set to determine how major appliance use is related to the number of bedrooms in existing homes. These data, coupled with existing and proposed DOE appliance testing and labeling standards, are then used to determine a set of baseline lighting and appliance energy end use values for use in the HERS …

Improved Geometry Modeling For High Fidelity Parametric Design, James R. Gloudemans, Robert A. Mcdonald

Aerospace Engineering

Advanced multidisciplinary physics-based design and analysis capabilities are required to pursue the revolutionary vehicle and technology concepts needed to meet the goals of the aerospace industry for the next 10-30 years. The multidisciplinary physics critical to advancing aerospace technology all have one common bond, the shape, size, and form of the underlying aircraft - its geometry. An aircraft shape is the natural starting point for multidisciplinary analysis and optimization (MDAO). Vehicle Sketch Pad (VSP) is an aircraft geometry tool for rapid evaluation of advanced design concepts which was developed by NASA and is available to industry at large. VSP allows …

Conceptual Design Of A Next Generation, 150 Passenger Commercial Transport, Ryan Halper, Kevin Lane, Dustin Marschik, Brett Morham, John Pham, Robert A. Mcdonald, Bruce Wright

Aerospace Engineering

In response to the 2008-2009 AIAA Undergraduate Team Design Competition's Request for Proposals for an advanced, environmentally compatible, 150 seat commercial transport; Jackson West has designed the Sparrow JS-3. The Sparrow represents the next step in the evolution of commercial aviation. Scheduled to enter service in 2018, The Sparrow will compete directly with the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320. Its improvements in fuel consumption and operating cost, as well as its reduced environmental impact, make The Sparrow the ideal solution to this RFP.

Assessment Of Sting Effect On X-31 Aircraft Model Using Cfd, Adam Jirásek, Russell M. Cummings

Aerospace Engineering

The article describes the computational evaluation of the effect a belly mounted sting on the aerodynamics characteristics of an X-31 wind tunnel model. The investigation includes results of steady and time-dependent CFD analysis of the X-31 model with and without sting. The values of the steady lift and pitching moment coefficients as well as the pitching moment of model undergoing a manuever are compared to each other and to the wind tunnel data. The results of this analysis show the detrimental effect of sting on stability of the vortical structure above the wing as well as a substantial increase of …

Overview Of Recent Circulation Control Modeling Activities At Cal Poly, David D. Marshall, Kristina K. Jameson

Aerospace Engineering

This paper provides an overview of the Circulation Control modeling research that has been performed, and is still ongoing, at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. This work started in 2005 with the interest of applying Circulation Control technologies to advanced aircraft designs. After the initial investigations into this, it was apparent that there was a long history of experimental work in this area to build on, but a number of deficiencies existed in the modeling capabilities. For Circulation Control enabled aircraft, these included: few available tools to accurately model the takeoff and landing performance, the limitations in the standard regulations …

Improved Methodologies For Maneuver Design Of Aircraft Stability And Control Simulations, Adam Jirásek, Tiger L. Jeans, Mathew Martenson, Russell M. Cummings, Keith Bergeron

Aerospace Engineering

With many modern fighter aircraft experiencing unpredicted flight dynamics during flight tests, recent research has focused on developing methodologies for incorporating computational fluid dynamics into the aircraft development process. The goal of this approach is to identify configurations susceptible to stability and control issues early in the design process. Previous research has primarily focused on full aircraft configurations, however, to increase the rate of development the current study focused on a two-dimensional NACA0012 airfoil. The two-dimensional NACA0012 airfoil has the advantage of reducing the computational cost by orders of magnitude compared to full scale aircraft simulations, while still providing complicated …

Parameter Estimation Of Fundamental Technical Aircraft Information Applied To Aircraft Performance, Mike Vallone, Robert A. Mcdonald

Aerospace Engineering

Inverse problems can be applied to aircraft in many areas. One of the disciplines within the aerospace industry with the most openly published data is in the area of aircraft performance. Many aircraft manufacturers publish performance claims, flight manuals and Standard Aircraft Characteristic (SAC) charts without any mention of the more fundamental technical information such as C_D0. With accurate tools, generalized aircraft models and a few curve-fitting techniques, it is possible to evaluate vehicle performance and estimate these technical parameters.

With this goal a program has been written in Matlab to calculate the fundamental information behind a …

Designing A Green Aircraft: Cal Poly's 2009 Undergraduate Aircraft Designs, Robert A. Mcdonald, Bruce Wright

Aerospace Engineering

The Cal Poly senior design class submitted six designs this year in response to the 2009 Undergraduate Team Aircraft Design Competition. This paper summarizes our experiences teaching design through this RFP and brings the student's insights together.

Conceptual Design Of An Environmentally Responsible 150-Passenger Commercial Aircraft, Natalie R. Smith, Bryan Blessing, James Dixon, Allen Mackey, Gregory Mckenzie, Robert A. Mcdonald, Bruce Wright

Aerospace Engineering

Verde is an environmentally responsible commercial transport seating 150 dual-class passengers, designed in response to the 2008-2009 Request for Proposal from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Undergraduate Team Aircraft Design Competition. While the airline industry faces increasing pressures from the cost of fuel and the responsibility of environmental impact, the next generation of this aircraft class must operate more efficiently and address those environmental needs. Therefore, all design decisions for Verde focused first on reducing fuel burn, second on reducing emissions, then noise, and finally on maintaining flyaway cost, airport integration, and passenger comfort. The final design utilizes …

Lift Superposition And Aerodynamic Twist Optimization For Achieving Desired Lift Distributions, Kevin A. Lane, David D. Marshall, Robert A. Mcdonald

Aerospace Engineering

A method for achieving an arbitrary lift distribution with an arbitrary planform is presented. This is accomplished through optimizing aerodynamic twist for a given number of either known airfoils or airfoils to be designed. The spanwise locations of these airfoils are optimized to get as close to the desired lift distribution as possible. Airfoils are linearly interpolated between these points. After aerodynamic twist, the planform is twisted geometrically using radial basis functions to model the twist distribution. The aerodynamic influence of each twist distribution is determined and all are superimposed to determine the function weights of each twist function, yielding …

A Three Dimensional Vortex Particle-Panel Method For Modeling Propulsion-Airframe Interaction, Jacob S. Calabretta, Robert A. Mcdonald

Aerospace Engineering

The panel code has been a pivotal tool for aerodynamic simulations for decades, today providing users with quick solutions without the necessity of a volume grid. Unfortunately, the panel code also carries with it some inherent shortcomings when compared with other methods. One such weakness is its inability to account for any work done on or by the system in question. This paper proposes a method to address this issue by combining vortex particles with a panel code, and using them to model the work effects of a propeller or engine. While the proposed model is still a work in …

Computational And Experimental Comparison Of A Powered Lift, Upper Surface Blowing Configuration, Jay Marcos, David D. Marshall

Aerospace Engineering

This paper demonstrates the use of CFD as a validation tool for wind tunnel data on 2D high lift airfoil with a 3D engine performed by Georgia Tech Research Institute. Results of this validation will assist in determining the appropriate turbulence models, boundary conditions, mesh characteristics and other CFD modeling techniques necessary to capture the complicated flow physics associated with the coupling of circulation control wings and engine exhaust flows. It was found that grid issues and the two-equation turbulence model, k-ε, over predicted lift as blowing momentum increases even with the additional complexity of having an over the wing …

Design And Performance Of Circulation Control Flap Systems, Rory M. Golden, David D. Marshall

Aerospace Engineering

The design of circulation control (CC) dual radius flap systems were investigated to characterize the parameters that make up the flap surface to offer further knowledge into the CC field of study. Multiple dual radius flap geometries, along with variants, were developed by varying specific flap parameters from a baseline configuration that had previously developed. The aerodynamics of the different flap geometries were analyzed using two-dimensional CFD. This research will explore the design of CC pneumatic flap systems to improve the performance of existing CC flap configurations, and provide insight into the characteristics of the CC flap geometry.

Towards Efficient Viscous Modeling Based On Cartesian Methods For Automated Flow Simulation, Patrick Hu, Hongwu Zhao, Ramji Kamakoti, Nagendra Dittakavi, Liping Xue, Kan Ni, Shaolin Mao, David D. Marshall, Michael Aftosmis

Aerospace Engineering

The advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques that address the current limitations of Cartesian-based Navier-Stokes CFD schemes are explored in current investigation. Three promising methods of implementing improved wall boundary conditions are applied: (1) the enhanced diamond path stencil approach, (2) the reformulated extended extrapolation boundary condition, and (3) the ghost cell method. Several initial testing cases have been conducted with all these three boundary conditions, including the flow past a circular cylinder, flow past a flat plate at different inclined angles and flow past an AGARD RAE2822 airfoil. All the results show the effectiveness of these boundary conditions in …

Inverse Airfoil Design Utilizing Cst Parameterization, Kevin A. Lane, David D. Marshall

Aerospace Engineering

An inverse airfoil design process is presented that makes use of the CST parameterization method. The CST method is very powerful in that it can easily represent any airfoil shape within the entire design space of smooth airfoils. This makes it an ideal modeling technique for an inverse design process because accurate airfoil geometry treatment is required. The downfall of some inverse design processes is that they do not accurately handle the leading edge region due to large flow gradients and high curvature distributions. One way to account for this is by representing airfoils with smooth analytic functions, such as …

Assessing The V2-F Turbulence Models For Circulation Control Applications, Travis M. Storm, David D. Marshall

Aerospace Engineering

This paper explores the applicability of several variations of the v²-f turbulence model to circulation control flows. The effects of modifying the model to capture nonlinear eddy viscosity effects and streamline curvature effects are assessed. Results indicate that the v²-f turbulence model is capable producing more physically accurate results for circulation control flow fields than common modern turbulence modeling techniques.

Bdf-Like Methods For Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis, S. Dong

PRISM: NNSA Center for Prediction of Reliability, Integrity and Survivability of Microsystems

We present several time integration algorithms of second-order accuracy that are numerically simple and effective for nonlinear elastodynamic problems. These algorithms are based on a general four-step scheme that has a resemblance to the backward differentiation formulas. We also present an extension to the composite strategy of the Bathe method. Appropriate values for the algorithmic parameters are determined based on considerations of stability and dissipativity, and less dissipative members of each algorithm have been identified. We demonstrate the convergence characteristics of the proposed algorithms with a nonlinear dynamic problem having analytic solutions, and test these algorithms with several three-dimensional nonlinear …

Smooth-Wall Boundary Conditions For Dissipation-Based Turbulence Models, W. F. Phillips, Doug F. Hunsaker, Robert E. Spall

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

It is shown that the smooth-wall boundary conditions specified for commonly used dissipation-based turbulence models are mathematically incorrect. It is demonstrated that when these traditional wall boundary conditions are used, the resulting formulations allow an infinite number of solutions. Furthermore, these solutions do not enforce energy conservation and they do not properly enforce the no-slip condition at a smooth surface. This is true for all dissipation-based turbulence models, including the k-ε, k-ω, and k-ζ models. Physically correct wall boundary conditions must force both k and its gradient to zero at a smooth wall. Enforcing these two boundary conditions on k …

Development Of Canadian Seismic Design Provisions For Steel Sheathed Shear Walls, Nisreen Balh

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

No abstract provided.

Bennett Clocking Of Nanomagnetic Logic Using Multiferroic Single-Domain Nanomagnets, Jayasimha Atulasimha, Supriyo Bandyopadhyay

Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Publications

The authors show that it is possible to rotate the magnetization of a multiferroic (strain-coupled two-layer magnetostrictive-piezoelectric)nanomagnet by a large angle with a small electrostatic potential. This can implement Bennett clocking [Int. J. Theor. Phys.21, 905 (1982)] in nanomagnetic logic arrays resulting in unidirectional propagation of logic bits from one stage to another. This method is potentially more energy efficient than using spin-transfer torque for magnetization rotation. For realistic parameters, it is shown that a potential of ∼0.2 V applied to a multiferroicnanomagnet can rotate magnetization by nearly 90° to implement Bennett clocking.

Numerical Investigation Of Aeroelastic Mode Distribution For Aircraft Wing Model In Subsonic Air Flow, Marianna A. Shubov, Stephen B. Wineberg, Robert Holt

Mathematics & Statistics

In this paper, the numerical results on two problems originated in aircraft wing modeling have been presented. The first problem is concerned with the approximation to the set of the aeroelastic modes, which are the eigenvalues of a certain boundary-value problem. The affirmative answer is given to the following question: can the leading asymptotical terms in the analytical formulas be used as reasonably accurate description of the aeroelastic modes? The positive answer means that these leading terms can be used by engineers for practical calculations. The second problem is concerned with the flutter phenomena in aircraft wings in a subsonic, …

2010 Civil And Environmental Engineering Department News, Department Of Civil And Environmental Engineering, Michigan Technological University

Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering Newsletters

Table of Contents

• New Faculty
• Strategic Hiring Initiative
• Faculty awards
• Student Awards
• Student Competitions
• Academy of Civil and Environmental Engineers
• CEE Donor Recognition
• Department Information

Theoretical Estimation Of Optical Absorption And Photoluminescence In Nanostructured Silicon; An Approach To Improve Efficiency In Nanostructured Solar Cells, Jaspreet S. Nayyar

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Renewable energy is growing in demand, and thus the the manufacture of solar cells and photovoltaic arrays has advanced dramatically in recent years. This is proved by the fact that the photovoltaic production has doubled every 2 years, increasing by an average of 48% each year since 2002.

Covering the general overview of solar cell working, and its model, this thesis will start with the three generations of photovoltaic solar cell technology, and move to the motivation of dedicating research to nanostructured solar cell. For the current generation solar cells, among several factors, like photon capture, photon reflection, carrier generation …

Use Of Hydroclimatic Forecasts For Improved Water Management In Central Texas , Wenge Wei

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Accurate seasonal to interannual streamflow forecasts based on climate information are critical for optimal management and operation of water resources systems. Considering most water supply systems are multipurpose, operating these systems to meet increasing demand under the growing stresses of climate variability and climate change, population and economic growth, and environmental concerns could be very challenging. This study was to investigate improvement in water resources systems management through the use of seasonal climate forecasts. Hydrological persistence (streamflow and precipitation) and large-scale recurrent oceanic-atmospheric patterns such as the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the …

Static And Dynamic Contact Angle Measurement On Rough Surfaces Using Sessile Drop Profile Analysis With Application To Water Management In Low Temperature Fuel Cells, Vinaykumar Konduru

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Fuel Cells are a promising alternative energy technology. One of the biggest problems that exists in fuel cell is that of water management. A better understanding of wettability characteristics in the fuel cells is needed to alleviate the problem of water management. Contact angle data on gas diffusion layers (GDL) of the fuel cells can be used to characterize the wettability of GDL in fuel cells. A contact angle measurement program has been developed to measure the contact angle of sessile drops from drop images. Digitization of drop images induces pixel errors in the contact angle measurement process. The resulting …

Vibro-Acoustical Analysis And Design Of A Multiple-Layer Constrained Viscoelastic Damping Structure, Fei Lin

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

The goal of this research is to provide a framework for vibro-acoustical analysis and design of a multiple-layer constrained damping structure. The existing research on damping and viscoelastic damping mechanism is limited to the following four mainstream approaches: modeling techniques of damping treatments/materials; control through the electrical-mechanical effect using the piezoelectric layer; optimization by adjusting the parameters of the structure to meet the design requirements; and identification of the damping material’s properties through the response of the structure. This research proposes a systematic design methodology for the multiple-layer constrained damping beam giving consideration to vibro-acoustics.

A modeling technique to study …

Human And Embodied Energy Analysis Applied To Water Source Protection And Household Water Treatment Interventions Used In Mali, West Africa , R. Brendan Held

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

As water quality interventions are scaled up to meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of the population without access to safe drinking water by 2015 there has been much discussion on the merits of household- and source-level interventions. This study furthers the discussion by examining specific interventions through the use of embodied human and material energy. Embodied energy quantifies the total energy required to produce and use an intervention, including all upstream energy transactions. This model uses material quantities and prices to calculate embodied energy using national economic input/output-based models from China, the United States and Mali. …