Aeronautical Vehicles Commons^™

Measurements Of Wind Turbine Wake Evolution And Trajectory During Morning Boundary Layer Transition And Under Wake Steering Conditions Via Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Stewart Nelson

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

In July of 2019, a flight campaign was conducted using semi-autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) at the Port Alma Kruger Energy wind farm in Ontario, Canada, to study various aspects of wind turbine wake evolution. Horizontal transects across the wakes were measured using modified fixed-wing aircraft fitted with a five-hole probe to measure the wind velocity vector. Reference boundary layer conditions were measured by an octocopter with an assortment of mounted sensors flying vertical profiles upstream of the turbines. Three experiments were conducted during the campaign, which consisted of a study on wake behavior during the morning boundary layer transition, …

Dji Drone Modification, Sean Lacey, Seth Mancuso, Bryce Mckenzie

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

For this project, we set out to create a lightweight carrying case that would be mounted to a DJI Phantom 3. This case is designed to transport small packages, such as medications, from a delivery vehicle to their final destination. Based on our maximum drone lifting capacity of 600 grams, our case, servomotor, and contents had to weigh less than or equal to that value. The coronavirus pandemic has led to an increase in contactless delivery options along with the push for immunocompromised people to avoid contact with people that may be sick. Our product would help transport necessary supplies …

Design Of Banner Tow Mechanism For Bush Plane, Kyle Ciarrone, Ivan Martin, Rishabh Gadi, Tyler Brandt

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The 2019-2020 AIAA DBF objective was to design, build, and test a banner-towing bush plane that carries wooden passengers and luggage. Senior members on the team undertook the creation of the banner tow mechanism subsystem as their senior design project on behalf of the design team due to the challenge of its mechanical design and the aerodynamic considerations regarding its placement and enclosure aboard the aircraft. The competition as well as access to campus resources were canceled due to COVID-19, so full testing and integration of the mechanism was not achieved. However, the engineering design process was experienced from the …

Redesign And Analysis For Landing Gear Components, Daniel Clarke

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

A project for Collins Aerospace, the company I co-op at, where I will redesign several components of a landing gear for a military program. Any structural/stress analysis will also be performed. The goal is to reduce weight while maintaining strength and structural integrity.

In-Flight Wingtip Folding: Inspiration From The Xb-70 Valkyrie, Gaétan X. Dussart, Mudassir Lone, Ciaran O'Rourke, Thomas Wilson

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Wingip folding can be used to extend aircraft wingspan, allowing designers to take advantage of reduced induced drag whilst respecting ground operational limitations. Such devices can also be used in-flight for a variety of other benefits including load alleviation and flight control. The majority of in-flight folding research takes inspiration in past developments made on the XB-70 Valkyrie, which used the folding devices for stability and lift performance benefits. In this paper, the authors investigate the capabilities of the folding wingtip system and potential scaling to large civil aircraft. Manufacturing details are used to size the actuators whilst the aerodynamic …

Improving The Delivered Specific Impulse Of Composite Rocket Propellant Through Alteration Of Chemical Composition: Methodology And Parameters For Characterization Of Propellant And Validation Of Simulation Software Common To The Amateur Rocketry Community, Isaac O'Brien, Austin Ryan

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In this study, two solid composite rocket propellants were designed utilizing ProPEP, a rocket propellant formulation software common in the amateur and hobby rocketry communities. The two propellants were designed to optimize specific impulse relative to a literature propellant designed by 1020 Research Labs. The literature propellant was also tested in order to validate the design of experiment as well as the mixing and testing procedures. All three propellants, which includes the literature propellant RCS-P, and the two novel propellants AKR-P1 and AKR-P2 were characterized with static tests. The results of the static tests provide data on propellant performance and …

Immunity-Based Framework For Autonomous Flight In Gps-Challenged Environment, Mohanad Al Nuaimi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In this research, the artificial immune system (AIS) paradigm is used for the development of a conceptual framework for autonomous flight when vehicle position and velocity are not available from direct sources such as the global navigation satellite systems or external landmarks and systems. The AIS is expected to provide corrections of velocity and position estimations that are only based on the outputs of onboard inertial measurement units (IMU). The AIS comprises sets of artificial memory cells that simulate the function of memory T- and B-cells in the biological immune system of vertebrates. The innate immune system uses information about …

Active Permanent Magnet Attitude Control For Cubesats Using Mu-Metal Shielding, Maxwell Martin

Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Cube-Satellites (CubeSats) are nanosatellites composed of cube shaped units, each nominally 10cm to a side and around 1kg in mass. Due to their inherent size and weight limitations, it is often impractical to use conventional attitude, or rotational, control methods such as thrusters on these small satellites. Several methods, including magnetorquer rods and small reaction wheels, are often used instead of traditional methods to work around the size and weight limitations. As a new alternative to these methods, a permanent magnet mounted on a rotatable shaft could be used to achieve attitude control. In much the same way that a …

Experimental Investigation Of A New Spiral Wingtip, Naseeb Ahmed Siddiqui, Mohammed Aldheeb, Waqar Asrar, Erwin Sulaeman

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Experiments on the relative merits and demerits of slotted wingtips mimicking a bird’s primary feathers have been performed. The real emargination length of feather tips, their flexibility and curved shapes during cruise are considered in the present study. The experiments were performed at a Reynolds number of 3.7 x 10⁵ on a symmetric flat plate half wing of aspect ratio 3. Lift, drag and pitching moments were measured using a six component aerodynamic balance. Four different shapes inspired by bird primary feathers have been analysed. The rigid curved tip performed the best increasing the L/D ratio by 20%. This …

Real Time And High Fidelity Quadcopter Tracking System, Tyler Mckay Hall

Computer Engineering

This project was conceived as a desired to have an affordable, flexible and physically compact tracking system for high accuracy spatial and orientation tracking. Specifically, this implementation is focused on providing a low cost motion capture system for future research. It is a tool to enable the further creation of systems that would require the use of accurate placement of landing pads, payload acquires and delivery. This system will provide the quadcopter platform a coordinate system that can be used in addition to GPS.

Field research with quadcopter manufacturers, photographers, agriculture and research organizations were contact and interviewed for information …

Deployable Antenna For Cubesat, Mackenzie Thomas Lennon, Caleb Andrew Barber, David Matthew Galves

Mechanical Engineering

This project is a proof-of-concept ground model of a large deployable antenna designed for the small space requirements of CubeSats. This small deployment module is designed to fit a 2 m by 1 m reflective antenna inside a storage volume of with the dimensions 20 cm by 20 cm x 40 cm. The reflector will be deployed to a parabolic shape with the goal of modeling the reflector necessary for high frequency communication. Because this module is designed as a proof-of-concept for the deployable parabolic reflector specifically, no electrical components will be incorporated and will just focus on the deployment …

The Effect Of Biocomposite Material In A Composite Structure Under Compression Loading, Benjamin Andrew Sweeney

Master's Theses

While composite structures exhibit exceptional strength and weight saving possibilities for engineering applications, sometimes their overall cost and/or material performance can limit their usage when compared to conventional structural materials. Meanwhile ‘biocomposites’, composite structures consisting of natural fibers (i.e. bamboo fibers), display higher cost efficiency and unique structural benefits such as ‘sustainability’. This analysis will determine if the integration of these two different types of composites are beneficial to the overall structure. Specifically, the structure will consist of a one internal bamboo veneer biocomposite ply; and two external carbon fiber weave composite plies surrounding the bamboo biocomposite. To acquire results …

Autonomous Quadrotor Collision Avoidance And Destination Seeking In A Gps-Denied Environment, Thomas C. Kirven

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

This thesis presents a real-time autonomous guidance and control method for a quadrotor in a GPS-denied environment. The quadrotor autonomously seeks a destination while it avoids obstacles whose shape and position are initially unknown. We implement the obstacle avoidance and destination seeking methods using off-the-shelf sensors, including a vision-sensing camera. The vision-sensing camera detects the positions of points on the surface of obstacles. We use this obstacle position data and a potential-field method to generate velocity commands. We present a backstepping controller that uses the velocity commands to generate the quadrotor's control inputs. In indoor experiments, we demonstrate that the …

The Design Of A Racing Simulator: A Three-Phase User Testing Approach, Jakob E. Rouleau, Eric J. Wach

Human Factors and Applied Psychology Student Conference

No abstract provided.

Comparisons Of Ablator Experimental Performance To Response Modeling And Effects Of Water Phase Transition In Porous Tps Materials, David L. Smith

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

The Mars Science Laboratory Entry Descent and Landing Instrumentation (MEDLI) project performed extensive arc jet tests for development, qualification, and calibration of instrumented heat shield plugs. These plugs each contained several thermocouples for recording near-surface and in-depth temperature response of the Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) heat shield. The arc jet test results are entered into a comprehensive database so that broad trends across the test series can be compared. One method of analysis is to compare with ablator material response calculations and solve the in-depth heat conduction equations. Using the near-surface thermocouple measurements as a boundary condition in numerical …

Modeling And Test Of The Efficiency Of Electronic Speed Controllers For Brushless Dc Motors, Clayton R. Green

Master's Theses

Small electric uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAV) represent a rapidly expanding market requiring optimization in both efficiency and weight; efficiency is critical during cruise or loiter where the vehicle operates at part power for up to 99% of the mission time. Of the four components (battery, motor, propeller, and electronic speed controller (ESC)) of the electric propulsion system used in small UAVs, the ESC has no accepted performance model and almost no published performance data. To collect performance data, instrumentation was developed to measure electrical power in and out of the ESC using the two wattmeter method and current sense resistors; …

A Contribution Toward Better Understanding Of Overbanking Tendency In Fixed-Wing Aircraft, Nihad E. Daidzic

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

The phenomenon of overbanking tendency for a rigid-body, fixed-wing aircraft is investigated. Overbanking tendency is defined as a spontaneous, unbalanced rolling moment that keeps increasing an airplane’s bank angle in steep turns and must be arrested by opposite aileron action. As stated by the Federal Aviation Administration, the overbanking tendency may lead to a loss of control, especially in instrument meteorological conditions. It was found in this study that the speed differential over wing halves in horizontal turns indeed creates a rolling moment that achieves maximum values for bank angles between 45 and 55 degrees. However, this induced rolling moment …

Suborbital Spaceflight: A Student Team’S Plan To Send A Rocket To Space, Bryce Chanes, William Carpenter, Julio Benavides, Matthew Haslam, Brenda Haven

Aviation / Aeronautics / Aerospace International Research Conference

The Eagle Space Flight Team was created with the goal of becoming the first undergraduate team to design, build, and launch a rocket capable of suborbital spaceflight. In order to achieve this goal, the team will have to design a rocket capable of atmospheric flight at speeds over Mach 5 and launch it on one of the largest amateur rocket motors ever made. Over the next three years, the team will progress towards accomplishing this feat through a series of incremental test flights. Before the space flight, the team will build three sub-scale rockets designed to reach altitudes of 30,000’, …

Magnus Effect In Duct Flow, Jesse S. Batko, Cameron W. Clarke, Kenneth W. Smith Jr.

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The following research paper details the preliminary research carried out by this team. The project was originally conceived to determine if Magnus Lift could be utilized in an unconventional way to assist rockets during takeoff. Several conceptual designs were proposed, but the idea was scrapped when it became apparent that the team would not be able to generate the desired lift without inducing significant amounts of drag and additional weight on a rocket. Instead, the team focused on researching an interesting topic that hasn’t been previously explored: Magnus lift on a cylinder within a duct.

An experimental procedure that could …

Magnus Effect In Duct Flow, Cameron W. Clarke, Jesse S. Batko, Kenneth W. Smith Jr.

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The following research paper details the preliminary research carried out by this team. The project was originally conceived to determine if Magnus Lift could be utilized in an unconventional way to assist rockets during takeoff. Several conceptual designs were proposed, but the idea was scrapped when it became apparent that the team would not be able to generate the desired lift without inducing significant amounts of drag and additional weight on a rocket. Instead, the team focused on researching an interesting topic that hasn’t been previously explored: Magnus lift on a cylinder within a duct. An experimental procedure that could …

Design Of The Structural And Propulsion Systems For The 2015 University Of Akron Rocket Team, Kyle W. Dehoff, Nicholas J. Hrusch

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

No abstract provided.

Development Of An Exteroceptive Sensor Suite On Unmanned Surface Vessels For Real-Time Classification Of Navigational Markers, Christopher Lloyd Kennedy

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

This thesis presents the development of an exteroceptive sensor suite for real-time detection and classification of navigational markers on Unmanned Surface Vessels. Three sensors were used to complete this task: a 3D LIDAR and two visible light cameras. First, all LIDAR points were transformed from the sensor’s reference frame to the local frame using a Kalman filter to estimate instantaneous vehicle pose. Next, objects were chosen from the LIDAR data to be classified using either Multivariate Gaussian or Parzen Window Classifiers. Both produce 96% accuracy or better, however, multivariate Gaussian ran considerably faster than the Parzen and was simpler to …

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

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Lightweight Uav Launcher, Ben Miller, Christian Valoria, Corinne Warnock, Jake Coutlee

Mechanical Engineering

This report discusses the design, construction, and testing of a lightweight, portable UAV launcher. There is a current need for a small team of soldiers to launch a US Marine Tier II UAV in a remote location without transport. Research was conducted into existing UAV launcher designs and the pros and cons of each were recorded. This research served as a basis for concept generation during the initial design development stage. It was required that the design weigh less than 110 lbs, occupy a smaller volume than 48" x 24" 18" in its collapsed state, be portable by a single …

Nasa Human Exploration Rover Challenge, Estelle Fortes, Aaron Taylor, Caitlin Talerico, Jessica Chow, Jessica Turcios, Johnnie Perry, Joshua Beck, Juana Cecilia Martin-Gonzalez, Lisa Ferguson, Michaela Branscomb, Mo Sabliny, Raeann Vansickle, Sarah Pearson, Sierra Dryer, Zach Henney, Brenda Haven

Aviation / Aeronautics / Aerospace International Research Conference

NASA's Great Moonbuggy Race, held annually in at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is an engineering design challenge that asks teams of student engineers to design a human-­‐powered vehicle capable of traversing a simulated lunar surface. However, there is an interesCng sCpulaCon in the design of the moonbuggy: it must be able to be transported in a 4x4x4 foot cube, echoing the design constraint faced by the engineers who built the Lunar Roving Vehicles used by the astronauts of the later Apollo missions. The vehicle in this proposal, Ocelot, designed by the Society of Women Engineers at …

Gust Mitigation Of Micro Air Vehicles Using Passive Articulated Wings, Adetunji Oduyela, Nathan Slegers

Faculty Publications - Biomedical, Mechanical, and Civil Engineering

Birds and insects naturally use passive flexing of their wings to augment their stability in uncertain aerodynamic environments. In a similar manner, micro air vehicle designers have been investigating using wing articulation to take advantage of this phenomenon. The result is a class of articulated micro air vehicles where artificial passive joints are designed into the lifting surfaces. In order to analyze how passive articulation affects performance of micro air vehicles in gusty environments, an efficient 8 degree-of-freedom model is developed. Experimental validation of the proposed mathematical model was accomplished using flight test data of an articulated micro air vehicle …

Filtered-Dynamic-Inversion Control For Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Systems, Jon Mullen

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Instrumented umanned aerial vehicles represent a new way of measuring turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer. However, autonomous measurements require control methods with disturbance-rejection and altitude command-following capabilities. Filtered dynamic inversion is a control method with desirable disturbance-rejection and command-following properties, and this controller requires limited model information. We implement filtered dynamic inversion as the pitch controller in an altitude-hold autopilot. We design and numerically simulate the continuous-time and discrete-time filtered-dynamic-inversion controllers with anti-windup on a nonlinear aircraft model. Finally, we present results from a flight experiment comparing the filtered-dynamic-inversion controller to a classical proportional-integral controller. The experimental results show …

Fault-Tolerant Trajectory Tracking Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Immunity-Based Model Reference Adaptive Control, Brenton K. Wilburn

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation presents the design, development, and simulation testing of an adaptive trajectory tracking algorithm capable of compensating for various aircraft subsystem failures and upset conditions. A comprehensive adaptive control framework, here within referred to as the immune model reference adaptive control (IMRAC) algorithm, is developed by synergistically merging core concepts from the biologically- inspired artificial immune system (AIS) paradigm with more traditional optimal and adaptive control techniques. In particular, a model reference adaptive control (MRAC) algorithm is enhanced with the detection and learning capabilities of a novel, artificial neural network augmented AIS scheme. With the given modifications, the MRAC …

Ramjet Combustion Chamber, Paul Cameron Stone

Aerospace Engineering

A ramjet combustion chamber is designed and some initial assembly fabrication and test completed as a component of a ramjet graduate project for California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo Supersonic Wind Tunnel. The combustor design is driven by a theoretical model created by a Cal Poly graduate student, Harrison Sykes. Temperature, pressure, and fuel flow will be measured.

Development Of A Pyrotechnic Shock Simulation Apparatus For Spacecraft Applications, Joseph Binder, Matthew Mccarty, Chris Rasmussen

Aerospace Engineering

This report details the research, design, construction, and testing of a pyrotechnic shock simulation apparatus for spacecraft applications. The apparatus was developed to be used in the Space Environments Lab at California Polytechnic State University. It will be used for testing spacecraft components with dimensions up to 24”x12”x12” as well as CubeSats. Additionally, it may be used as an instructional or demonstrational tool in the Aerospace Department’s space environments course. The apparatus functions by way of mechanical impact of an approximately 20 lb stainless steel swinging hammer. Tests were performed to verify the simulator’s functionality. Suggestions for improvement and further …