Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Rv-7 N675cp Lean Versus Rich Fuel Mixture Aircraft Performance, Edward Spenser Burgos, William Beaman Howe

Aerospace Engineering

The purpose of this experiment was to compare the effects of flying with lean mixture versus rich mixture on aircraft performance. This was done by taking data in the RV-7 N675CP aircraft, RV-7A base aircraft that was built by students at California Polytechnic State University of San Luis Obispo. The RV-7 N675CP contains a Lycoming O-360-A 180 HP engine and fully automated flight data acquisition system. Test flight data indicates the aircraft consumes less fuel, has greater engine exhaust gas temperature (EGT), and possibly increases airspeed with a lean fuel mixture.

Matlab® Gui Visualization Of Classical Orbital Elements, Nancy Teresa Cabrera

Aerospace Engineering

The classical orbital elements of an orbit are eccentricity, angular momentum, inclination, right ascension of ascending node, true anomaly, and argument of perigee. These six parameters define an orbit. Using MATLAB® to model a satellite orbiting Earth in three dimensions, a graphical user interface was created to allow a user to manipulate the orbital elements to desired quantities. In doing so, each parameter’s impact on the orbit is visually displayed. This furthers the understanding of how the parameters are linked to the orbit. When the interface is first opened, the default circular orbit has a range of 20,000 kilometers, an …

Valveless Pulsejet Engine, Cory William Kerr, James Robert Reynolds

Aerospace Engineering

The goal of this project is to build a valveless pulsejet based on the Lady Anne model, known as the Focused Wave Engine VIII Twin Stack. This project has two main goals. The first goal is to design and build the valveless pulsejet. This includes machine work on stainless steel to build the engine, as well as modifying copper tubes to serve as a fuel injection system. The second goal is to build a test stand that allows for accurate data collection of the total thrust being produced by the engine and acts as a fuel injection and ignition system. …

Design, Fabrication, Structural Testing, And Numerical Analysis Of A Small Scale Composite Wing, Jacob David Gaunt, Juan Carlos Flores, Vincent Andrew Perry

Aerospace Engineering

A small scale composite wing based on a design found on an experimental aircraft was designed, constructed, and tested dynamically and statically. The wing was constructed similarly to an experimental aircraft wing. The performed static test was intended to produce pure bending. Strain gages were used to measure strains on the wing structure. The strains were converted to stresses to aid in analysis. The static test results suggested that the wing was actually under torsion. Four structural modes were found from the static test. A finite element analysis model was made to compare experimental results to numerical analytical results. The …

A Three Dimensional Vortex Particle-Panel Code For Modeling Propeller-Airframe Interaction, Jacob S. Calabretta

Master's Theses

Analysis of the aerodynamic effects of a propeller flowfield on bodies downstream of the propeller is a complex task. These interaction effects can have serious repercussions for many aspects of the vehicle, including drag changes resulting in larger power requirements, stability changes resulting in adjustments to stabilizer sizing, and lift changes requiring wing planform adjustments.

Historically it has been difficult to accurately account for these effects at any stage during the design process. More recently methods using Euler solvers have been developed that capture interference effects well, although they don't provide an ideal tool for early stages of aircraft design, …

Modified Sequential Kriging Optimization For Multidisciplinary Complex Product Simulation, Wang Hao, Wang Shaoping, Mileta M. Tomovic

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Directing to the high cost of computer simulation optimization problem, Kriging surrogate model is widely used to decrease the computation time. Since the sequential Kriging optimization is time consuming, this article extends the expected improvement and put forwards a modified sequential Kriging optimization (MSKO). This method changes the twice optimization problem into once by adding more than one point at the same time. Before re-fitting the Kriging model, the new sample points are verified to ensure that they do not overlap the previous one and the distance between two sample points is not too small. This article presents the double …

Observations Of Temporal Group Delays In Slow-Light Multiple Coupled Photonic Crystal Cavities, S. Kocaman, Xiaodong Yang, J. F. Mcmillan, M. B. Yu, D. L. Kwong, C. W. Wong

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We demonstrate temporal group delays in coherently coupled high- Q multicavity photonic crystals, in an all-optical analog to electromagnetically induced transparency. We report deterministic control of the group delay up to 4x the single cavity lifetime in our room-temperature chip. Supported by three-dimensional numerical simulations and theoretical analyses, our multipump beam approach enables control of the multicavity resonances and intercavity phase, in both single and double transparency peaks. The standing-wave wavelength-scale photon localization allows direct scalability for chip-scale optical pulse trapping and coupled-cavity quantum electrodynamics.

Uav Pirates And Silentrack Integration, Travis Dean, Hushnak Singh, Ashley Wager, Matthew (Matt) Woolridge

Electrical Engineering

The integration of the UAV pirating system with the SilenTrack video tracking system will allow the combined system to automatically identify and track a suspicious air vehicle visually as well as identify and decode the RF control signal. Once a threat has been identified, the system will execute an algorithm to associate each control channel with the corresponding flight control surface. Once the control channels have been decoded the user can use a hand held radio controller to maneuver the drone which is now under their command.

Applied System Identification For A Four Wheel Reaction Wheel Platform, Seth F. Silva

Master's Theses

Applied System Identification for a Four Wheel Reaction Wheel Platform

By

Seth Franklyn Silva

At the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo there is a four-wheel reaction wheel pyramidal simulator platform supported by an air-bearing. This simulator has the current capability to measure the wheel speeds and angular velocity of the platform, and with these measurements, the system identification process was used to obtain the mass properties of this simulator. A handling algorithm was developed to allow wireless data acquisition and command to the spacecraft simulator from a “ground” computer allowing the simulator to be free of induced torques …

Non-Explosive Actuator Simulator, Bryan Costanza

Aerospace Engineering

The CubeSat group at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo discovered the need for a new piece of ground test equipment. Previous testing of the non-explosive actuator has been very expensive and is not repeatable; two undesirable traits. The analysis of the fuse as well as the design and test of the simulator concept and final article is discussed. The simulator has already seen real use and its entire build and operation cost is much less than the cost of one test of the actual hardware. Performance of the simulator based on burn time and reset time is acceptable …

Cubesat Developers' Workshop 2010, Tracy Owens, Ryan Race

Communication Studies

This project is the narrative component of the 7th Annual CubeSat Developers' Workshop 2010 planning process. It reviews the steps and team dynamics over the seven months spent coordinating the conference for the Aerospace Department. It was the first time that students from the Communcation Studies Department were brought in to help with the event, and the gap between the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Engineering was bridged.

Blended Wing Body Form Factor Code And Model Center Integration, Simone (Simo) Alberti

Aerospace Engineering

This senior project investigated a method of calculating the form factor of an arbitrarily shaped wing, such as a blended wing body, from its pressure coefficient distribution. A Matlab script was coded and integrated into an existing Model Center tool for blended wing bodies. Model Center allows a VSP model to be analyzed with PMARC, a panel code, to determine the pressure distribution over a wing. The Matlab code can then calculate the form factor and critical Mach number. It was found that the code can accurately model simple planar wings, validated against empirical equations, and is robust for blended …

Development Of A Meshless Method To Solve Compressible Potential Flows, Alejandro Ramos

Master's Theses

The utility of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for solving problems of engineering interest has experienced rapid growth due to the improvements in both memory capacity and processing speed of computers. While the capability now exists for the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations about complex and complete aircraft configurations, the bottleneck within the process is the time consuming task of properly generating a mesh that can accurately solve the governing partial differential equations (PDEs). This thesis explored two numerical techniques that attempt to circumvent the difficulty associated with the meshing process by solving a simplified form of the continuity equation within …

Numerical Examination Of Flow Field Characteristics And Fabri Choking Of 2d Supersonic Ejectors, Brett G. Morham

Master's Theses

An automated computer simulation of the two-dimensional planar Cal Poly Supersonic Ejector test rig is developed. The purpose of the simulation is to identify the operating conditions which produce the saturated, Fabri choke and Fabri block aerodynamic flow patterns. The effect of primary to secondary stagnation pressure ratio on the efficiency of the ejector operation is measured using the entrainment ratio which is the secondary to primary mass flow ratio.

The primary flow of the ejector is supersonic and the secondary (entrained) stream enters the ejector at various velocities at or below Mach 1. The primary and secondary streams are …

Novel Inverse Airfoil Design Utilizing Parametric Equations, Kevin A. Lane

Master's Theses

The engineering problem of airfoil design has been of great theoretical interest for almost a century and has led to hundreds of papers written and dozens of methods developed over the years. This interest stems from the practical implications of airfoil design. Airfoil selection significantly influences the application's aerodynamic performance. Tailoring an airfoil profile to its specific application can have great performance advantages. This includes considerations of the lift and drag characteristics, pitching moment, volume for fuel and structure, maximum lift coefficient, stall characteristics, as well as off-design performance.

A common way to think about airfoil design is optimization, the …

Analytic Confusion Matrix Bounds For Fault Detection And Isolation Using A Sum-Of-Squared-Residuals Approach, Daniel J. Simon, Donald L. Simon

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Given a system which can fail in 1 of n different ways, a fault detection and isolation (FDI) algorithm uses sensor data to determine which fault is the most likely to have occurred. The effectiveness of an FDI algorithm can be quantified by a confusion matrix, also called a diagnosis probability matrix, which indicates the probability that each fault is isolated given that each fault has occurred. Confusion matrices are often generated with simulation data, particularly for complex systems. In this paper, we perform FDI using sum-of-squared residuals (SSRs). We assume that the sensor residuals are s-independent and Gaussian, which …

Aircraft Data Collection System, Amy Kronsteiner, Danny Marx, Collin Heller, Nathaniel Garcia, Nicholas Riccobono, Scott Parks, Albert Liu

Biomedical Engineering

This report outlines the design and building process for an interchangeable testing device that collects aircraft performance data. Included is the project objectives, system requirements, management plan, design concept development, design details, manufacturing procedures, and project verification test plans. The device is a wing-mounted Pitot-static system integrated with an Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS).

A Design-Build-Test-Fly Project Involving Modeling, Manufacturing, And Testing, Scott Post, Shankar Seetharaman, Sree Abimannan

Publications

This paper describes a junior-level semester-long class project for students in Fluid Mechanics courses. The goals of the project are to introduce students to engineering design, project management, and to incorporate material from other courses in engineering graphics, numerical methods, instrumentation and measurements, and manufacturing processes in a single project. The project focuses on airfoil design using computational tools, and the main emphasis lies on verification of results obtained from computational methods with experimentally measured values. Students will use the airfoil shape they select to make wings to go on a model foam glider. The final part of the project …

Measurement Of Refractive Index Change Of Optical Fiber Core Induced By Femtosecond Laser Scanning, Y. Han, T. Wei, Hai-Lung Tsai, Hai Xiao

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We report a new method to measure the refractive index change in optical fiber core induced by femtosecond (fs) laser exposure. An in-line Fabry-Perot interferometer, serving as the measurement platform, is constructed on a commercial single-mode optical fiber by onestep femtosecond (fs) laser fabrication. A positive refractive index change is observed and measured accurately as the laser pulse energy surpasses the ablation threshold.

New Space Access Opportunities, Robert J. Twiggs

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint presentation created by Professor Bob Twiggs titled "New Space Access Opportunities" May 18, 2010.

Delamination Of Sandwich Composites, Richard Anthony Davis

Aerospace Engineering

The use of shear keys to help stop or inhibit the face-sheet core delamination of sandwich composite beams under monotonic loading was analyzed in Cal Poly’s structural design lab. The composite beams were treated with the same boundary conditions as the ASTM D5528 double cantilever beam bending in which both faces of the beam remain free; one of the faces would have a debonded side and the other would not. An aluminum tab is attached to the top of the specimens and the load is applied there. Each specimen has piezoelectric sensors that are utilized in the detection of delamination …

A Novel Telescopic Boom Deployment System For Use In Upper Atmosphere Research, Mark Wylie, Paul Duffy, Dinesh Vather, Johnalan Keegan, Stephen Curran

Conference Papers

Typical measurement probe deployment systems on sounding rockets employ hinged booms which extend the probes away from the rocket. This configuration often has a significant mass and may require a considerable amount of the rocket’s valuable payload volume. In an effort to reduce both mass and volume, the DIT Space Research Group have designed a light weight carbon fibre telescopic boom system, compatible with measurement probes commonly used in upper atmosphere research. Our design has been selected to be tested on a suborbital space flight onboard the REXUS 9 sounding rocket in March 2011. The purpose of this test is …

Guidance And Navigation Linear Covariance Analysis For Lunar Powered Descent, Travis J. Moesser

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A linear covariance analysis is conducted to assess closed-loop guidance, navigation, and control system (GN&C) performance of the Altair vehicle during lunar powered descent. Guidance algorithms designed for lunar landing are presented and incorporated into the closed-loop covariance equations. Navigation-based event triggering is also included in the covariance formulation to trigger maneuvers and control dispersions. Several navigation and guidance trade studies are presented demonstrating the influence of triggering and guidance and study parameters on the vehicle GN&C performance.

Analysis Of Square-Root Kalman Filters For Angles-Only Orbital Navigation And The Effects Of Sensor Accuracy On State Observability, Jason Knudsen Schmidt

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Angles-only navigation is simple, robust, and well proven in many applications. However, it is sometimes ill-conditioned for orbital rendezvous and proximity operations because, without a direct range measurement, the distance to approaching satellites must be estimated by firing thrusters and observing the change in the target's bearing. Nevertheless, the simplicity of angles-only navigation gives it great appeal. The viability of this technique for relative navigation is examined by building a high-fidelity simulation and evaluating the sensitivity of the system to sensor errors. The relative performances of square-root filtering methods, including Potter, Carlson, and UD factorization filters, are compared to the …

An Exploration Of Formal Methods And Tools Applied To A Small Satellite Software System, Russell J. Grover

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Formal system modeling has been a topic of interest in the research community for many years. Modeling a system helps engineers understand it better and enables them to check different aspects of it to ensure that there is no undesired or unexpected behavior and that it does what it was designed to do. This thesis takes two existing tools that were created to aid in the designing of spacecraft systems and creates a layer to connect them together and allow them to be used jointly. The first tool is a library of formal descriptions used to specify spacecraft behavior in …

Modeling The Momentum And Mass Transfer Within A Micro-Scale Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell For Flows Within The Slip Flow Regime, Sean Tamarun Goudy

Dissertations

Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems are heterogeneous catalytic systems. Although there are many computational models that describe the behavior of PEM fuel cells, few simulate the catalyst surface concentration of reactant gases at the catalyst layer-membrane layer inteface. Most PEM fuel cell models make no distinction between the bulk concentration of reactants and the catalyst surface concentration of reactants. It is the surface concentration that is key when studying PEM fuel cell systems: the reactions occur at the surface of the catalyst.

In addition, few model the dynamics within the non-continuum flow region near the solid surfaces of …

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Analysis: Lessons Learned From Stationary Power Generation Final Report, Scott E. Grasman, John W. Sheffield, Fatih Dogan, Sunggyu Lee, Umit O. Koylu, Angie Rolufs

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study considered opportunities for hydrogen in stationary applications in order to make recommendations related to RD&D strategies that incorporate lessons learned and best practices from relevant national and international stationary power efforts, as well as cost and environmental modeling of pathways. The study analyzed the different strategies utilized in power generation systems and identified the different challenges and opportunities for producing and using hydrogen as an energy carrier. Specific objectives included both a synopsis/critical analysis of lessons learned from previous stationary power programs and recommendations for a strategy for hydrogen infrastructure deployment. This strategy incorporates all hydrogen pathways and …

Adverse Elevator Effect In Landing Flare, Nihad E. Daidzic

Aviation Department Publications

No abstract provided.

Women In The Aviation Industry, Maureen N. Mutisya

Senior Honors Theses

The Aviation industry has developed extensively since its establishment by the Wright Brothers in 1903. Over time, the highly male-dominated industry experienced significant changes to incorporate female aviators. Determined women initiated this process through participating in the aircraft engineering sector and pursuing careers as pilots. However, these women faced various challenges, which resulted in setbacks to their effective growth in the industry. In fact, vital issues encountered in the past are still present and often overlooked in today’s aviation industry. Therefore, identifying these problems and proposing solutions with effective corrective measures is necessary to increase and motivate female pilots globally.

Programs With Rockets, Robert J. Twiggs

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint presentation created by Professor Bob Twiggs on "Programs with Rockets" from April 5, 2010.