Propulsion and Power Commons^™

Investigating Various Propulsion Systems For An External Attachment For A Controlled-Manual De-Orbit Of The Hubble Space Telescope, Nelson De Guia

Aerospace Engineering

This reports explains the results for a proposed senior project. This project concerns the Hubble Space Telescope, and exploring the possibility of having an external propulsion attachment for a manual de-orbit. The Hubble Space Telescope was proposed to return to Earth via the Space Shuttle. Although, through the current U.S. Space Administration, the Space Shuttle has been retired before the Hubble Space Telescope was retrieved. By completing this project, the results could provide insight to what type of propulsion would best de-orbit the Hubble upon its retirement. Different propulsion systems were considered to attempt to determine an optimal attachment, varying …

Feasibility Analysis For Electrically-Powered Hoverboard, Cameron Chan, Jason Cortez, Jay Lopez

Aerospace Engineering

Composite materials are engineered by combining two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties in such a way that the constituents are still distinguishable, and not fully blended. Due to today’s high rising prices of gasoline and aviation fuel costs, many manufacturers have turned to the use of lightweight composites in their designs due to the advantages of the composite material, which include outstanding strength, excellent durability, high heat resistance, and significant weight reduction that the composite material properties hold. The purpose of this project is to design and construct a composite structure for an electrically-powered …

Experimental Investigation Of A 2-D Air Augmented Rocket: High Pressure Ratio And Transient Flow-Fields, Josef S. Sanchez

Master's Theses

A 2-D Air Augmented Rocket, the Cal Poly Air Augmented Rocket (CPAAR) Test Apparatus operating as a mixer-ejector was tested to investigate high stagnation pressure ratio and transient flow fields of an ejector. The primary rocket ejector was supplied with high pressure nitrogen at a maximum chamber pressure of 1758 psia and a maximum mass flow rate of 1.4 lb/s. The secondary flow air was entrained from a fixed volume plenum chamber producing pressures as low as 3.3 psia. The maximum total pressure ratio achieved was 221. The original CPAAR apparatus was rebuilt re-instrumented and capability expanded. A fixed volume …

Design And Analysis Of A Reusable N2o-Cooled Aerospike Nozzle For Labscale Hybrid Rocket Motor Testing, Daniel Joseph Grieb

Master's Theses

A reusable oxidizer-cooled annular aerospike nozzle was designed for testing on a labscale PMMA-N₂0[1] hybrid rocket motor at Cal Poly-SLO.[2] The detailed design was based on the results of previous research involving cold-flow testing of annular aerospike nozzles and hot-flow testing of oxidizer-cooled converging-diverging nozzles. In the design, nitrous oxide is routed to the aerospike through a tube that runs up the middle of the combustion chamber. The solid fuel is arranged in an annular configuration, with a solid cylinder of fuel in the center of the combustion chamber and a hollow cylinder of fuel lining …

Wind Tunnel Modeling Of Small Electric Uav Power System Performance, Nathan R. Phelps

Aerospace Engineering

This report details the design and construction of a testing apparatus for characterization of small electric aircraft power systems designed for use in the California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo Aerospace Engineering department’s subsonic wind tunnel. This apparatus was constructed and implemented with the goal of determining system and component efficiencies of an entire power system using RC Aircraft components as an analog for systems currently in use in the current generation of small electric UAV’s in service with the US Armed Forces. The goal of these experiments was to determine where improvements in the system architecture can be …

Experimental Investigation Of A 2-D Air Augmented Rocket: Effects Of Nozzle Lip Thickness On Rocket Mixing And Entrainment, Trevor Allen Montre

Master's Theses

Cold-flow tests were performed using a simulated Air Augmented Rocket (AAR) operating as a mixer-ejector in order to investigate the effects of varied primary nozzle lip thickness on mixing and entrainment. The simulated primary rocket ejector was supplied with nitrogen at a maximum chamber stagnation pressure of 1712 psi, and maximum flow rate of 1.67 lb_m/s. Secondary air was entrained from a plenum, producing pressures as low as 6.8 psi and yielding maximum stagnation pressure ratios as high as 160. The primary ejector nozzles each had an area ratio of approximately 20, yielding average primary exit Mach numbers …

Comet: Constrained Optimization Of Multiple-Dimensions For Efficient Trajectories, Michael Curt Conrad

Master's Theses

The paper describes the background and concepts behind a master’s thesis platform known as COMET (Constrained Optimization of Multiple-dimensions for Efficient Trajectories) created for mission designers to determine and evaluate suitable interplanetary trajectories. This includes an examination of the improvements to the global optimization algorithm, Differential Evolution, through a cascading search space pruning method and decomposition of optimization parameters. Results are compared to those produced by the European Space Agency’s Advanced Concept Team’s Multiple Gravity Assist Program. It was found that while discrepancies in the calculation of ΔV’s for flyby maneuvers exist between the two programs, COMET showed a noticeable …

Vibration-Based Health Monitoring Of Multiple-Stage Gear Train And Differential Planetary Transmission Involving Teeth Damage And Backlash Nonlinearity, Andrew Patrick Sommer

Master's Theses

The objective of this thesis is to develop vibration-based fault detection strategies for on-line condition monitoring of gear transmission systems. The study divides the thesis into three sections. First of all, the local stresses created by a root fatigue crack on a pinion spur gear are analyzed using a quasi-static finite element model and non-linear contact mechanics simulation. Backlash between gear teeth which is essential to provide better lubrication on tooth surfaces and to eliminate interference is included as a defect and a necessary part of transmission design. The second section is dedicated to fixed axis power trains. Torsional vibration …

Analysis And Design Of A Propulsion System Trade Study Tool For A Boeing 376 Series Communications Satellite, Kevin Dunk

Aerospace Engineering

No abstract provided.

Design, Manufacturing And Testing Of An Environmentally-Green Bipropellant Thruster, Alex Bendoyro, Gabriel Sanchez, Erin Stearns, Phillip Takahashi

Aerospace Engineering

This project reviews the design, manufacturing and experimentation process of a green bi-propellant thruster designed to output 5 lbf. The goals were to successfully design, manufacture and test a thruster, while discovering the complications that arise through out the complete design process of a green thruster. The thruster was successfully designed using ideal rocket equations and the design was successfully confirmed using CFD and FEA. Manufacturing of the thruster was fully planned and revealed mild flaws in thruster design. For example some features were not manufacturable to the exact measurements desired. Testing of the engine gave results inconsistent with expected …

Electric Aircraft Propulsion Test Rig Design & Fabrication, Ryan Mayer, Brian Kubicki, Bradley Rodriguez, Austin Harris, David Caudle

Aerospace Engineering

An electric aircraft propulsion test rig was designed and fabricated to predict thrust, torque and battery discharge profiles for an electric aircraft. The original unit was purchased from ElectraFlyer and included the DC brushless motor, carbon fiber propeller, charger, electronic controller and lithium polymer batteries. Various components were constructed and purchased in order to fabricate the optimal test rig apparatus. This apparatus allows for simultaneous measurement of the torque and thrust of the system through the use of a biaxial sensor. The test rig also measures system voltage and current, which allows the user to determine the discharge profile of …

Hybrid Rocket Based Combined Cycle Test Rig Design, Construction, And Testing, Mark Costa, Matthew Handfelt

Aerospace Engineering

No abstract provided.

Imu Integration To The Cal Poly Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics Simulator Power System, Wayland Chan

Electrical Engineering

The Cal Poly Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics Simulator mimics the rotation dynamics of a spacecraft in orbit and acts as a test bed for spacecraft attitude control system development and demonstration. Prior to this project, the simulator measured its attitude dynamics from a total of seven sensors mounted on to the platform, including three micro-electromechanical system (MEMs) gyroscopes, and four motor encoders. This project entails the installation of an LN-200 high performance gyroscope, which will provide a greater measure of accuracy. The goal of this project is to design a power circuit that will integrate the LN-200 inertial measurement unit onto …

Compressor Performance Map Generation And Testing Per Sae J1723, Jeffrey Lee Freeman

Aerospace Engineering

A MATLAB program was written to plot compressor performance maps for a set of test data that was collected in accordance with SAE J1723 at Vortech Engineering, Inc. Paxton Automotive Corp.'s N2500 supercharger was used as a case example for the program, which was carried through from test stand installation to finalized compressor performance map. A sequence was also developed to interpolate the efficiency of the compressor for a given operational setting. The program was shown to be a great improvement from the previously applied technique for accomplishing the same tasks; it is more accurate in plotting the given data, …

Thermal Models For A 3 Cm Miniature Xenon Ion Thruster, Coleman Thomas Younger

Master's Theses

In order to support UCLA’s development of the 3 cm Miniature Xenon Ion (MiXI) thruster, Cal Poly has a 3 cm thruster under development. This version, called MiXI Cal Poly Version 1 (MiXI-CPv1), is complete and has been utilized in vacuum chamber thermal validation testing. Testing on this version was used to check the validity of heat transfer simulations modeled in SolidWorks. Investigations of the 3 cm ion thruster configuration were intended to discover the driving factors affecting the thermal behavior of the discharge chamber and surrounding design space.

Numerical simulations indicate that the heating of the samarium cobalt permanent …

Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of An Automotive Turbocharger-Based Gas Turbine Engine, John Kyle Thoma, Daniel Shehan, Benjamin Naravage, Jacob Melvin

Aerospace Engineering

A fully-functioning, self-sustaining gas turbine engine was designed and built. The engine was constructed around a Holset HE351 VGT automobile turbocharger, containing compressor and turbine assemblies on a common shaft. Other components of the engine were either purchased or designed and fabricated in-house. During initial testing of the completed engine, the turbocharger, however, was found to have extensive damage to the internal oil seals, and so the project could not be completed as planned. Instead, the combustor design and fabrication was completed for stand-alone testing. The combustion chamber was designed so that the flame tube could be easily changed out …

Hybrid Rocket Motor, Zach Arena, Alexander Athougies, Alden Rodulfo

Aerospace Engineering

This project involves the re-design, manufacturing, and testing of the Cal Poly Space System’s 4th iteration of an M-class 98mm hybrid rocket motor. This motor utilizes hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene as fuel with liquid nitrous oxide as the oxidizer. Modeling and analysis was conducted on a 12 port self-impinging swirl injector and fuel manufacturing to improve performance. Several hot and cold flow tests were conducted to validate the analysis and predict performance values. Test results included two test fires resulting in an average of 212 lbf of thrust for 6 seconds with an Isp of 160 seconds and an average thrust of …

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. …

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, …

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 …

Experimental Development Of Compressor And Turbine Performance Maps For Turbomachinery, Michael W. Green

Aerospace Engineering

Turbomachinery performance maps are used to reveal the on and off design performance of compressors and turbines. These maps plot the component’s pressure ratio versus the corrected flow rate for multiple engine rotor speeds. In this experiment, a Boeing T50-BO-8A converted turbojet engine was operated at a wide variety of rotor speeds with orifice plates of different sizes to vary the flow rate. The corrected flow rate through the turbojet ranged from 1.32 to 2.55 lb/s. The pressure ratios for the compressor and turbine ranged from 2.0 to 4.3 and from 1.7 to 4.3, respectively. The resulting performance maps showed …

Smore Phase 2: An Upgrade In Valve Systems & Startup Procedure For A Small Methanol Oxygen Liquid Rocket Engine, Christian Soria

Aerospace Engineering

A Methanol-Oxygen liquid rocket engine was designed and manufactured under the California Polytechnic State University Aerospace Department by students in a graduate level rocket propulsion class. The SMORE, previously known as the KORE, is now in an ongoing testing and developing stage with plans to incorporate it into the aerospace undergraduate propulsion lab. Phase 2 of the liquid rocket engine development is to produce a start-up procedure that will improve the safety due to manual operation and poor ignition conditions. A propane ignition system along with the implementation of electrically operated solenoid valves to control the fuels and oxidizer were …

Mixi Thruster Tungsten And Thoriated Tungsten Testing, Jesse R. Miller

Aerospace Engineering

The purpose of this project is to build and evaluate a tungsten filament cathode for the 3-cm Miniature Xenon Ion (MiXI) thruster. The filament is to be used for future tests within the CP 3-cm MiXI and thoriated tungsten is to be examined as a possible alternative. No testing of these filaments was conducted, but the preparatory work has been conducted for future testing.

Rayleigh Flow Of Two-Phase Nitrous Oxide As A Hybrid Rocket Nozzle Coolant, Lauren May Nelson

Master's Theses

The Mechanical Engineering Department at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo currently maintains a lab-scale hybrid rocket motor for which nitrous oxide is utilized as the oxidizer in the combustion system. Because of its availability, the same two-phase (gas and liquid) nitrous oxide that is used in the combustion system is also routed around the throat of the hybrid rocket’s converging-diverging nozzle as a coolant. While this coolant system has proven effective empirically in previous tests, the physics behind the flow of the two-phase mixture is largely unexplained. This thesis provides a method for predicting some of its …

The Interaction Between Throttling And Thrust Vectoring Of An Annular Aerospike Nozzle, David Michael Imbaratto

Master's Theses

Applied research and testing has been conducted at the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo High-pressure Blow-Down facility to study the affects of throttling in a thrust-vectored aerospike nozzle. This study supports the ongoing research at Cal Poly to effectively thrust vector a hybrid rocket motor. Such thrust vectoring is achieved by small secondary ports in the nozzle body that are perpendicular to the main nozzle. The testing conducted included characterizing and comparing the performance of a straight aerospike nozzle to that of a thrust-vectored aerospike nozzle. Throttling effects on the aerospike nozzle in an unvectored and in a vectored configuration …

Development Of A High Performance Micropropulsion System For Cubesats, Christopher Lorian Biddy

Master's Theses

Picosatellites are defined as satellites with a mass between 0.1 and 1kg (Miniaturized satellite). Picosatellites are typically designed to work together or function in formations (Miniaturized satellite). A specific type of Picosatellite known as CubeSats were introduced in 1999 and since then have increased in popularity so that there are now over 80 CubeSat programs around the world. CubeSats are defined as cubic units 10cm on each side and no more than 1kg in mass. CubeSats are required to conform to the CubeSat Standard created by California Polytechnic State University and Stanford University and be compatible with Cal Poly’s P-POD …

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Of An Extreme Aspect Ratio Hale Uav, Bryan J. Morrisey

Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization of an Extreme Aspect Ratio HALE UAV

Bryan J. Morrisey

Development of High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) aircraft systems is part of a vision for a low cost communications/surveillance capability. Applications of a multi payload aircraft operating for extended periods at stratospheric altitudes span military and civil genres and support battlefield operations, communications, atmospheric or agricultural monitoring, surveillance, and other disciplines that may currently require satellite-based infrastructure. Presently, several development efforts are underway in this field, including a project sponsored by DARPA that aims at producing an aircraft that can sustain flight for multiple years and …

Cfd As Applied To The Design Of Short Takeoff And Landing Vehicles Using Circulation Control, Tyler M. Ball

Master's Theses

The ability to predict the distance required for an aircraft to takeoff is an essential component of aircraft design. It involves aspects related to each of the major aircraft systems: aerodynamics, propulsion, configuration, structures, and stability and control. For an aircraft designed for short takeoffs and landings (STOL), designing the aircraft to provide a short takeoff distance, or more precisely the balanced field length (BFL), often leads to the use of a powered lift technique such as circulation control (CC). Although CC has been around for many years, it has never been used on a production aircraft. This is in …