Propulsion and Power Commons^™

Performance Characterization Of A Three-Axis Hall Effect Thruster, Spencer E. Temkin

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

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 …

Velocity Plume Profiles For Hall Thrusters Using Laser Diagnostic, Daniel B. Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This research built a non-intrusive laser diagnostic tool using Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) and absorption techniques to measure the velocity and density plume profiles of low powered Hall thrusters. This tool was then applied to a Busek 200W Hall thruster to validate the performance against previous research on the same thruster. A laser frequency sweep through 834.72 nm produced LIF signals for ionized xenon –collected at 541.9 nm – in the thruster plume and absorption data outside the plume at a neutral transition at 834.68 nm. The absorption data provided a baseline reference to calculate the axial and radially velocity …

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 …

An Experimental Study Of The Near Wake Field Behind A Propeller Aircraft, Hasan Ozgur Yavas

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This thesis presents an experimental study of the wake behind a generic, high wing, half model of a propeller driven aircraft. Wake surveys are performed at a free stream velocity of 9m/s in the Old Dominion University Low-Speed Wind Tunnel. The objective of the study is understanding the general characteristics of development and interaction of tip vortices, flap vortices, and propeller vortices in the wake of a two propeller aircraft. The measurements in the wake were obtained by using hot-wire anemometry. Measurements were made both using single wire and X-wire probes mounted on a traverse mechanism on three planes behind …

Analysis Of Hybrid-Electric Propulsion System Designs For Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Ryan M. Hiserote

Theses and Dissertations

Currently fielded electric-powered small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) lack the endurance desired by warfighters, while their internal combustion engine (ICE) driven counterparts generate mission compromising acoustic and thermal signatures. Parallel hybrid-electric propulsion systems would meet the military’s needs by combining the advantages of hydrocarbon and electric power systems. Three distinct parallel hybrid-electric system designs, each with three unique battery discharging profiles, were analyzed and compared using a constrained static optimization formulation based upon traditional aircraft design equations. Each system combined an ICE sized for cruise speed with an electric motor sized for endurance speed. The nine hybrid variations were compared …

Back-Pressure Effect On Shock-Train Location In A Scramjet Engine Isolator, Richard I. Paek

Theses and Dissertations

The isolator of the scramjet decelerates the incoming high Mach flow to a lower Mach number and stabilizes the flow before it enters the combustor. Because of the unsteady combustion phenomenon and inconsistent completeness of the combustion, pressures within the combustor can vary drastically. These pressure variations can propagate forward and affect the flow field in the isolator - worst case unstarting the inlet. In this research, the shock train location versus the back-pressure is examined experimentally. The back-pressure is artificially created by symmetric (top & bottom) ramps that can close the flow area. Raising/lowering ramps result in higher/lower back-pressure. …

Conceptual Design Tool For Fuel-Cell Powered Micro Air Vehicles, Paul M. Hrad

Theses and Dissertations

A conceptual design tool was built to explore power requirements of a hybrid-power system for Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) comparable in size to the Cooper's Hawk. An inviscid aerodynamic code, Athena Vortex Lattice (AVL), and a motor-propeller analysis code, QPROP, provide overall lift, drag, and thrust data for power-required calculation as functions of many variables to include mass, platform geometry, altitude, velocity, and mission duration. Phoenix Technologies’ Model Center was used to integrate multi-disciplinary components that employ specific power and specific energy of two power sources to determine power system mass required for a designated mission. The tool simulated a …

Design Of A Film Cooling Experiment For Rocket Engines, Andrew L. Sincock

Theses and Dissertations

The Film Cooling Rig (FCR) is a new test rig at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) to study film cooling for rocket engine applications. The original researcher designed, built, and then utilized the FCR to study radial curvature effects on film cooling for a non-combustion environment. This effort modified the FCR by adding propane-air combustion. Modular stainless steel test sections were produced to allow study of various curvatures and coolant injection angles. A pre-mixed burner was designed and built to deliver main flow mass flow rates necessary to produce blowing ratios as low as 0.5. A water cooling …

Off-Design Analysis Of A High Bypass Turbofan Using A Pulsed Detonation Combustor, Caitlin R. Thorn

Theses and Dissertations

Past research has indicated that implementation of a pulsed detonation combustor (PDC) into a high-bypass turbofan engine yields a more efficient engine at design conditions. It is proposed that performance gains can be made utilizing this hybrid engine off-design. A hybrid high-bypass turbofan engine with a PDC model was evaluated for a range of Mach numbers, altitudes, and fill fractions in the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS). Results were compared to a conventional baseline high-bypass turbofan engine that shares the same architecture with the hybrid. The NPSS baseline engine was validated using the Aircraft Engine Design System (AEDsys) program and …

Exfit Flight Design And Structural Modeling For Falconlaunch Viii Sounding Rocket, Michael J. Vinacco

Theses and Dissertations

This research effort furthers the Air Force’s study of reusable launch vehicles and hypersonic airfoils by conducting a hypersonic flight test using the US Air Force Academy’s FalconLAUNCH VIII sounding rocket. In this study, two experimental fin tips were designed and attached to the sounding rocket in place of two stabilizer fins in order to collect data throughout the rocket’s hypersonic flight profile. The desire to research, study, and test experimental fin tips was driven by the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Future responsive Access to Space Technologies (FAST) program and their desire to include vertical stabilizers on the wing tips …

Performance Of A Small Internal Combustion Engine Using N-Heptane And Iso-Octane, Cary W. Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

With the sustained interest in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Micro Air Vehicles (MAV), the military services have a real need for vehicles powered by an internal combustion (IC) engine that can run efficiently on heavy hydrocarbon fuels, especially JP-8 due to established logistics. This thesis concerns the results of running a two horsepower, 4-stroke, spark-ignition engine (FUJI BF34-EI) with both iso-Octane and n-Heptane. Results include the knocking characteristic of this engine with n-Heptane, a comparison of the brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) of the two fuels in a factory delivered engine configuration with a 17x10 APC propeller loading, a …

Minimizing Losses In A Space Laser Power Beaming System, Charlie T. Bellows

Theses and Dissertations

A mathematical model is developed to track the amount of power delivered in a wireless laser power beaming system. In a wireless system the power proceeds through several different stages before being delivered to a payload for use. Each of these stages results in power losses that are thoroughly examined and modeled, allowing for the calculation of the likely amount of power delivered. Adjusting variable factors within the model allows for the optimization of the system for a specific task. The model shows that an optimized wireless power transfer system can deliver enough power to meet the space experiment objectives. …

Orbit Maneuver For Responsive Coverage Using Electric Propulsion, Timothy S. Hall

Theses and Dissertations

The use of continuous electric propulsion to manipulate a satellite’s orbit offers significant potential for enhancing coverage of a target in ways not previously considered. Elliptical orbits utilizing a very low perigee can facilitate access to the surface and atmosphere of the Earth at sub-ionosphere altitudes while counteracting atmospheric drag forces using continuous electric propulsion. Additionally, in-plane and out-of-plane manipulation of both circular and elliptical orbits can allow for passage of a satellite over a target at a given time. Sustained low perigee orbit was modeled with an initial perigee altitude of 100 km and various apogee altitudes to derive …

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.