Aerospace Engineering Commons^™

Flight Testing Of The Piper J4a Cub Coupe, Kenneth Burton Connick

Theses and Dissertations

Flight testing is an important part of in the airplane design process. This testing is performed to ensure that the airplane complies with the established requirements and regulations for flight safety, as well as to ensure it meets its mission objectives. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) currently governs these requirements and regulations for civilian aircraft and provides airworthiness certifications. The FAA regulations were introduced in 1965. Prior to that, civilian aircraft were certified through the Civil Aeronautics Administration using Civil Air Regulations (CARs).

Change Of Exposure Time Mid-Test In High Temperature Dic Measurement, Thinh Quang Thai, Adam J. Smith, Robert J. Rowley, Paul R. Gradl, Ryan B. Berke

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Performing digital image correlation (DIC) at extreme temperatures has been greatly challenging due to the radiation which saturates the camera sensor. At such high temperatures, the light intensity emitted from an object is occasionally so powerful that the acquired images are overwhelmingly saturated. This induces data loss, potentially ruining the test, thus requiring the user to restart the test. For this reason, selection of an appropriate camera sensitivity plays a crucial role prior to beginning the test. Exposure time is a factor contributing to camera sensitivity and it is the easiest setting to manipulate during the test since it introduces …

Zenith Propulsion, Bryce Smoldon, Matthew Boban, Maxwell Kauker, Jonathan Noble, Stefan Johnson, Andrew Lucka, Nicholas Wright

Undergraduate Student Works

Launch Vehicle Design for the FAR-Mars Competition The Zenith Propulsion team took on the challenge put forth by the Friends of Amateur Rocketry (FAR), to build and launch a rocket propelled by a liquid rocket engine. In 2018-2019, a capstone team called Tiber Designs successfully designed and tested a 1,000 lbf-thrust rocket engine, named Janus, that uses liquid oxygen and jet-A (aviationgrade kerosene) as propellants. Zenith Propulsion would design a vehicle – 21 ft long, 6 in diameter, 170 lbm loaded – that uses the Janus rocket engine to fly to a target altitude of 30,000 ft above ground level. …

Urban Cargo Transport Uav Final Design Review, Niko Giannakakos, Rafael Barreto Gutierrez, Tejas Bhavsar

Senior Design Project For Engineers

Delivery of goods to homes and offices over the last decades has seen a significant increase as more people and businesses need or want items sent directly to them. With the increase in demand, technology has also experienced a rapid growth, specifically in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Many major companies are currently researching UAVs as the future of their delivery operations. With this ever-growing demand, NASA has issued a design competition of a UAV developed for urban deliveries. This unmanned aircraft system (UAS) would need to be able to deliver small packages, in a timely manner, within …

Aerial Screw Vtol Rotorcraft, Macale Rielly, Alexa Culp, Thomas Osteen, Adeline Perry

Senior Design Project For Engineers

Known as the “Renaissance Man,” DaVinci’s impressive knowledge of mechanics and inventive prowess would influence engineers and innovators hundreds of years later to make human flight a reality. However, due to the limited capacity of engineering and manufacturing at the time, his invention had been shallowly investigated in a production setting. This project strove to properly acknowledge DaVinci’s invention by thorough examination and critical analysis of his concept with the hopes of gaining a better understanding of why it is considered the “foundation of vertical flight”.

An iterative design approach was employed, utilizing faculty and university resources, team knowledge from …

Linear Covariance Navigation Analysis Of Range And Image Measurement Processing For Autonomous Lunar Lander Missions, Randall Christensen, David Geller, Michael Hansen

Space Dynamics Laboratory Publications

Growing interest in autonomous landing on the lunar surface has motivated in-depth studies of the navigation architectures to support such missions. The research presented in this paper extends linear covariance models of terrain-relative navigation architectures to incorporate both image-based measurements to known landmarks and laser range measurements to the lunar surface. The benefit of the range measurements is shown to be significant in reducing relative position and velocity errors in the altitude channel, as compared to an image-only navigation architecture. The range measurements are also shown to reduce the sensitivity of final relative navigation errors to the turn-on time of …

A Numerical Investigation Of Microgravity Evaporation, Daniel Peter Ringle

Dissertations and Theses

Evaporation is important to myriad engineering processes such as cooling, distillation, thin film deposition, and others. In fact, NASA has renewed interest in using cabin air pressure evaporation as a means to recycle waste water in space. As one example, NASA recently conducted experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to measure evaporation rates in microgravity and to determine the impacts of porous structure on the process. It has long been assumed that differences in evaporation rates between 1-g₀ and microgravity are small. However, discrepancies by as much as 40% have been observed in practice. The assumption now …

Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Based Heat Exchanger On The Martian, Sarah Guinn

Discovery Day - Prescott

The use of supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) in power cycles has been fairly new in the last decade. Due to this, there is a lack in research for both terrestrial and extraterrestrial applications. The purpose of this project is to utilize sCO2 as a working fluid and design and optimize a Brayton Cycle based heat exchanger on the Martian surface. Due to the lack of water on Mars, this research will provide a stronger analysis of planetary based drycooling processes in low atmospheric pressure and colder temperatures. We have been conducting an in-depth analysis of the heat exchanger by modeling …

Thermal Modeling Of Additive Manufacturing Using Graph Theory: Validation With Directed Energy Deposition, Jordan Severson

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Metal additive manufacturing (AM/3D printing) offers unparalleled advantages over conventional manufacturing, including greater design freedom and a lower lead time. However, the use of AM parts in safety-critical industries, such as aerospace and biomedical, is limited by the tendency of the process to create flaws that can lead to sudden failure during use. The root cause of flaw formation in metal AM parts, such as porosity and deformation, is linked to the temperature inside the part during the process, called the thermal history. The thermal history is a function of the process parameters and part design.

Consequently, the first step …

Investigation Of Navigation Systems For Size, Cost, And Mass Constrained Satellites, Omar Awad

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The feasibility of using radically inexpensive micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) technology for navigation of a nanosatellite is investigated with a focus on attitude estimation. Typically, larger satellites are equipped with star cameras, sun sensors, or Earth horizon sensors for attitude estimation. These sensors can provide very accurate attitude measurements. A nanosatellite is highly size, power, and cost constrained and cannot readily accommodate these sensors. Our mission is to design, build, and operate a radically inexpensive nanosatellite system. While there is no consensus on what constitutes a "radically inexpensive" satellite, our goal is a maximum cost of $10,000 per unit. This precludes …

Experimental Study On Compression And Shear Strength Of Cfrp, Joseph Gentile, Ethan Garber

Discovery Day - Prescott

The increasing use of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) in the aerospace industry requires a better understanding of its damage properties. Many modern aircraft under high loads are utilizing this material for their primary structures due to its high strength to weight ratio. However, CFRPs are sensitive to out-of-plane loading such as low-velocity impact and indentation. These damages can reduce the compressive strength significantly without leaving a visible mark on the surface, which is known as Barely Visible Impact Damage (BVID). The behavior and residual strength of CFRPs after impact damage under compressive loading are still not fully understood. Studies of …

Nonlinear Least Squares 3-D Geolocation Solutions Using Time Differences Of Arrival, Michael V. Bredemann

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

This thesis uses a geometric approach to derive and solve nonlinear least squares minimization problems to geolocate a signal source in three dimensions using time differences of arrival at multiple sensor locations. There is no restriction on the maximum number of sensors used. Residual errors reach the numerical limits of machine precision. Symmetric sensor orientations are found that prevent closed form solutions of source locations lying within the null space. Maximum uncertainties in relative sensor positions and time difference of arrivals, required to locate a source within a maximum specified error, are found from these results. Examples illustrate potential requirements …

Aerodynamics Of Wind Loading On Buildings, Kayla Burch

Honors Theses

A three-dimensional model of a one-story residential home, with an emphasis on the roof style and structure, was modeled using CATIA and then built and tested in the wind tunnel at Western Michigan University. The wind tunnel allowed an airflow over different style roofs to be tested at 100 mile per hour winds, strengths typical for hurricanes and other natural phenomena. The measured results show the lift and drag, along with the pressure gradient and the skin friction over the roofs. The effect of these aerodynamic characteristics of the building due to adding solar panel prototypes were also evaluated. The …

Quantifying Wicking In Functionlized Surfaces, Maureen Winter, Ryan Regan, Alfred Tsubaki, Craig Zuhlke, Dennis Alexander, George Gogos

UCARE: Research Products

Wicking remains the enigmatic key factor in many research areas. From boiling in power plants, to anti-icing on plane wings, to medical instruments, to heat pipes, efficiency and safety depend on how quickly a surface becomes wet. Yet wicking remains difficult to quantify and define as a property of the surface. This experiment strives to measure the wicking property by examining the rate that a liquid can be pulled out of a container. A superhydrophilic surface is placed in contact with the liquid at the bottom of a tube so that the volume flow rate across the surface can be …

Nytrox As “Drop-In” Replacement For Gaseous Oxygen In Smallsat Hybrid Propulsion Systems, Stephen A. Whitmore

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

A medical grade nitrous oxide (N₂O) and gaseous oxygen (GOX) “Nytrox” blend is investigated as a volumetrically-efficient replacement for GOX in SmallSat-scale hybrid propulsion systems. Combined with 3-D printed acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), the propellants represent a significantly safer, but superior performing, alternative to environmentally-unsustainable spacecraft propellants like hydrazine. In a manner analogous to the creation of soda-water using dissolved carbon dioxide, Nytrox is created by bubbling GOX under pressure into N₂O until the solution reaches saturation. Oxygen in the ullage dilutes N₂O vapor and increases the required decomposition energy barrier by several orders …

Arizona Hyperloop: The Fifth Mode Of Transportation, Eleanor Pahl, Matthieu Rada

Discovery Day - Prescott

Arizona Hyperloop is a coalition between Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Arizona State University students competing in Elon Musk’s annual SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. Hyperloop is the proposed “Fifth Mode of Transportation” - coined “a cross between a Concorde, a rail gun, and an air hockey table.” A hyperloop pod levitates and travels at nearly the speed of sound inside a vacuum tube, which eliminates air resistance. Musk hosts the annual competition to university students to encourage the evolution of urban transportation. The goal is to design, build, and race the fastest prototype pod at SpaceX’s mile-long test track in Hawthorne, …

Aircraft Leading Edge Strakes On Conventional Naca Wings, Anthony Pirone

Discovery Day - Prescott

The prevention of stall on aircraft wings has been a great challenge over the history of airplanes. As the aircraft become more and more complex, it becomes harder to fit high lift devices and leading-edge devices onto high camber, supercritical airfoil aircraft wings. In the fighter jet class of aircraft the obstacle of stall is usually delayed by the implementation of leading-edge root extensions or strakes. Strakes create a tip vortice along the sharp leading edge that transitions over the surface of the wing preventing separation on both the upper and lower surface of the wing allowing the fighter jet …

Sae Aero West Heavy Lift Competition Team - Eaglenautics, Anthony Pirone, Evan Stuart, Jessica Millard, Nathaniel Scott

Discovery Day - Prescott

ERAU’s SAE Aero Design West Competition team encourages students of all majors who have an interest in the design of heavy-lift cargo and passenger aircraft to design, build, and fly a large RC aircraft to meet a new set of regulations each competition year. Since the team, Eaglenautics, was founded in 2017 it has successfully been to competition once in April 2019 in California. The team’s aircraft flew 4 out of 5 flight rounds, passed all technical inspections, and is now on display in ERAU’s Aero-Fab in the AXFAB. The 2020 competition requirements are unique in that the cargo’s weight-to-volume …

Design, Construction And Testing Of A 3-Component Force Balance For Educational Wind Tunnels In Undergraduate Aerodynamics, Milan Tomin, Marco Scipioni, Benjamin Gatti

Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research

This article is focused on providing detailed instructions on how to build and use a force balance for educational wind tunnels. The article’s objective is to encourage undergraduate students in underfunded programs to engage in the field of aerodynamics. The discussed force balance represents an affordable device that only requires basic components like Arduino board, a servo motor, and acrylic and aluminum as construction materials. A simple data collection example is included at the end of the article showing that this simple force balance can collect meaningful data about lift, drag, and moment coefficient of a tested airfoil.

Numerical Investigation Of Leading-Edge Modifications Of A Naca Airfoil, Anisur Rahman Ikram

Masters Theses

A parametric investigation was carried out to understand the flow characteristics of tubercle airfoils and to determine the best approach and parameters for designing a tubercle airfoil. For this purpose, a straight edge base airfoil (NACA 4414) and several tubercle airfoils, by modifying the leading edge of the base airfoil, were created in SolidWorks and tested with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) application software Star CCM+.

Alternative tubercle airfoil with elliptical bumps demonstrated superior post-stall performance when compared to their straight edge counterparts; their post-stall lift did not decrease drastically. However, their pre-stall lift coefficients were always lower than the base …

Rotorcraft Blade Angle Calibration Methods, Brian David Calvert Jr.

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The most vital system of a rotorcraft is the rotor system due to its effects on the overall flight quality of the vehicle. Therefore, it is of importance to be able to accurately determine blade position during flight so that fine adjustments can be made to ensure a safe and efficient flight. In this study, a current calibration method focusing on the pitch, flap, and lead-lag blade angles is analyzed and found to have larger than acceptable error associated with the sensor calibrations. A literature review is conducted which reveals four novel methods that can potentially increase the accuracy of …

Through-Thickness Reinforcement And Repair Of Carbon Fiber Based Honeycomb Structures Under Flexure And Tension Of Adhesively Bonded Joints, Aleric Alden Sanders

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Repair and reinforcement of composite honeycomb structures is an area of concern as higher demands are being placed on high strength, lightweight structural materials, such as carbon fiber reinforced plastics and corresponding honeycomb structures. A common issue with these structures is when a delamination in the facesheet may form and spread, leading to a failure scenario. An investigation of adding a through thickness reinforcement (TTR) to these structures at the sample level that undergo four-point-bending, tension, and joining methods is conducted throughout this thesis. The embedding of pultruded carbon fiber rods is found to be an ideal addition to composite …

Nonlinearity Index Aircraft Spin Motion Analysis With Dynamic Inversion Spin Recovery Controller Design, Jeffry Walker

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The aim of this thesis research is to extend the previous work of Tapolcai utilizing nonlinearity index theory to quantitatively analyze nonlinearities in an aircraft model and to augment these undesirable nonlinear characteristics with feedback control. In his work Tapolcai utilized a simplified rotational three degree of freedom model to analyze spin conditions of the F-18 High Angle-of-Attack Research Vehicle model. Through the application of nonlinearity index theory, regions of severe nonlinearity were uncovered exhibiting chaotic non-periodic behavior, periodic limit cycling, and instability. If these conditions were encountered during flight, the aircraft would exhibit undesirable response characteristics thereby requiring augmented …

Thermal Contact Resistance Measurement And Related Uncertainties, Amanda Elizabeth Stark

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Thermal contact resistance is an important parameter in detailed thermal analysis and design of aerospace systems. The ability to determine thermal contact resistance reliably can have a significant impact on the fidelity of thermal models—particularly for space applications. The 2004 NASA Langley Research Center thermal contact resistance test apparatus has been employed to evaluate two methods for inferring estimated interface surface temperatures so that thermal contact resistance can be calculated more accurately. The traditional method of extrapolation is a steady-state approach, while the new method utilizes inverse heat transfer techniques to account for inherent unsteadiness in these quasi-steady-state measurements. The …

Fast Reversible Phase Change Silicon For Visible Active Photonics, Letian Wang, Matthew Eliceiri, Yang Deng, Yoonsoo Rho, Wan Shou, Heng Pan, Jie Yao, Costas P. Grigoropoulos

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Both amorphous and crystalline silicon are ubiquitous materials for electronics, photonics, and microelectromechanical systems. On-demand control of Si crystallinity is crucial for device manufacturing and to overcome the limitations of current phase-change materials (PCM) in active photonics. Fast reversible phase transformation in silicon, however, has never been accomplished due to the notorious challenge of amorphization. It is demonstrated that nanostructured Si can function as a PCM, since it can be reversibly crystallized and amorphized under nanosecond laser irradiation with different pulse energies. Reflection probing on a single nano disk's phase transformations confirms the distinct mechanisms for crystallization and amorphization. The …

Automation Of Process Planning For Automated Fiber Placement, Joshua A. Halbritter

Theses and Dissertations

Process planning represents an essential stage of the Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) workflow. It develops useful and efficient machine processes based upon the working material, composite design, and manufacturing resources. The current state of process planning requires a high degree of interaction from the process planner and could greatly benefit from increased automation. Therefore, a list of key steps and functions are created to identify the more difficult and time-consuming phases of process planning. Additionally, a set of metrics must exist by which to evaluate the effectiveness of the manufactured laminate from the machine code created during the Process Planning …

Dynamic And Control Of Air-Bearing Spacecraft Simulator, Jacob Joseph Korczyk

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

An air bearing is being designed as a spacecraft rotational motion simulator, featuring the Sawyer Robot and its control box. The objective is to maneuver the robot as desired, performing operations specific to on-orbit servicing operations while maintaining stability of the system. Before the control can be designed, the dynamics of the platform and the robot must be modeled. The dynamics of the robot can be derived utilizing a Newton-Euler recursive approach. By beginning with a simple pendulum, then adding links (degrees of freedom) to more closely resemble the Sawyer arm, the equations of motion for the robot can be …

Design And Control Of An Arrayed Infrared (Mat-Ir) Heater For Accurate Heating Control During Automated Fiber Placement, Benjamin L. C. Greenberg

Theses and Dissertations

Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) is the primary method for manufacturing of large and complex primary composite structures in the aerospace industry. Predominantly, AFP use infrared heaters to ensure appropriate tackiness between the different composite layers. The task of accurately detecting and obtaining a set uniform temperature, across the nip point/line, has proven to be difficult. Traditional AFP heat processes are mostly open-loop controlled, which can lead to issues with ensuring accurate and uniform heat distributions. The latter need to be obtained to allow for proper material consolidation to occur. Uneven heating could cause degradation at the center or at the …

Cfd Simulations Of A Propeller-Wing Interaction, Asim Oktay Akdeniz

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this study, 3-D turbulent flows around a propeller driven aircraft model placed in a subsonic wind tunnel were computationally simulated for qualitative investigation of near field wakes. The geometry of the model was created using commercial mesh generation software, GRIDGEN, and then simulations were performed using a commercial finite volume Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solver FLUENT.

Initial runs were performed to validate the boundary conditions and setup of the problem where a hybrid mesh consisting of multi-blocks was in use. Sliding mesh concept used in the computations. Laminar flow simulation have been utilized and tested besides Spalart-Allmaras and k-ω SST …

Hybrid Non-Destructive Assessment For Flow Induced Vibration Piping Systems Using Coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction, Keen Kuan Kong

Student Works (2020-2029)

Pipelines and piping systems are of great importance in many industries such as water supply, petroleum and petrochemicals and nuclear power generation. They provide transport for high-velocity pressurized fluids operating under time-varying conditions. They are required to operate non-stop for a schedule of 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Piping vibration failures have been one of the major causes of downtime, fires and explosions in industrial plant over the past 30 years. Failure of piping systems can have disastrous effects, leading to injuries and fatalities as well as to substantial cost to industry and the environment. Flow-induced vibration …