Systems Engineering and Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Commons^™

Lunar Regolith Densometer, Liam Lee, Vincent Innocenzi

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Testing of extraterrestrial rovers is a growing concern as lunar exploration as an industry is becoming increasingly commercialized. Currently, the way rover testing is conducted is on a soil regolith which is already available. The structure of the soil, however, is harmful to humans and requires a full bunny suit and respirator to be worn during the conduction of the experiment. This limitation, along with the expensive price tag, prevents college university students and companies from establishing a rover test area in labs. The goal of the overall project is to create a safer testing environment by mimicking the soil-to-tire …

Large Telescope Mount For Long Exposure Photos, Payne M. Landis, Anna J. Gray

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

When viewing the stars through a telescope, it is common that the object you are viewing drifts out of view. Many amateur astronomers seek to capture long exposure images of the stars, planets, and galaxies with commercially available sky tracking telescope mounts. The complication is that these telescope mounts are both incredibly expensive and have low weight limits. These issues limit accessibility to these products based on the telescope. For each person, telescope parameters determine the amount of light and magnification that can be viewed, which then determines exposures time for adequate photo results. The options on the market for …

Automated Soil Resetting System For Extraterrestrial Regolith Simulation, Parker W. Brennan, Anthony C. Daniels

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project focuses on designing an automated soil resetting system for extraterrestrial regolith simulation. The system will prepare a regolith simulant testbed to a desired, repeatable density, enabling reliable wheel–terrain testing for planetary rover research. Manual soil preparation currently exposes testers to hazardous particulates and produces inconsistent results.

The proposed system will integrate mechanical and control elements to reset the soil bed safely and efficiently. A combination of raking and vibrational methods will be explored, with feedback sensors and automation to achieve target density control. The research will proceed through literature review, benchtop experimentation, prototype design, and full-scale testing over …

Mobile Robot Adhesion Methodology And Development Of An Automatous Robot Module, Lauren Baird, Zachariah Stone, Madison Lemons, Jonathon Moody

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Due to the increasing availability of space travel as not only a scientific exploration but a commercial exploration, there is a need for an onsite repair station that can be deployed in the event of aircraft maintenance, damage, or failure. We have been tasked with researching and creating a prototype of an automatous robot that can be attached to a spacecraft body, move along the surface while avoiding obstacles, scan for damage, 3D print a repair piece, and then make the repair, all without the need of direct human input. Our team, as will be discussed throughout, was tasked with …

Materials Testing For Large Format 3d Printing, William Jenkins

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

An ABS Carbon Fiber blend was printed into single walled hexagons at a variety of settings on a Cincinnati BAAM large format 3D printer. These hexagons were then cut down into sheets and had tensile and flexural test samples cut out of them, in order for materials testing to be performed. Tensile strength, tensile strain, young’s modulus, flexural strength, deflection and elastic modulus were all determined. A desktop CNC machine and a planer were purchased for the manufacturing of these samples, and an efficient cutting procedure was designed and optimized. After all data collection concluded, this data was thoroughly analyzed, …

Short Strand Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polylactic Acid Filament For Additive Manufacturing, Dale Chenoweth, Lukas Seggi, Luke Phillips

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In this design project, the additive manufacturing filament of short strand carbon fiber (SSCF) reinforced polylactic acid (PLA) composite was developed. The micro-size, precision cut SSCFs were mixed with the PLA pellets through a melting homogenization process. Through this process the composite material block is cut and divided into pieces for ease of pelletizing. The material block pieces are then pelletized to be fed through the single screw extruder to develop the SSCF-PLA composite filament. The SSCF-PLA filaments were manufactured with a varying amount of SSCF ranging from 0.5% to 10% of the material block's weight. Development of a 1% …

Systems Engineering In Zips Aero Design, Benjamin Kemal Sabic, Mathieu Kumiega

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research project has the goal of implementing systems engineering in the Zips Aero Design team at the University of Akron at a general member level. The use of systems engineering techniques will be employed to keep every member on track throughout the competition season. The deliverables of this project are the PDR, CDR, AIAA DBF Proposal, AIAA Technical Design Report, the Prototype Aircraft, and the Competition Aircraft.

Co2 Based Parachute Deployment, Anthony M. S. Settlemier, Nicholas Motter

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper describes the design process of a CO2 based parachute deployment system for the Akronauts Rocket Design team, with particular emphasis on the selection of methodologies of deployment as well as design iteration. The objective was to create a fully mechanical system in order to replace the black powder based systems that were used previously by the team.

Emphasis was put in creating a system that would function well at higher altitudes while also preventing damage to the parachute during deployment. This system emphasizes robustness under launch conditions.

Liquid Engine External Pressurizer (Leep), Emily Armbrust

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this project is to take the current liquid rocket engine test stand design and implement an external pressurant instead of utilizing the 2-phase oxidizer vapor to pressurize itself and the fuel. The purpose behind the design is because the team is limited with the current design concerning burn time due to the amount of propellant they can put in the tanks and the pressure it can reach. The initial pressure is currently not held since there is no external input of mass into the tanks, as the propellant is leaving. Adding an external pressurant allow for the …

Fuel System To Envelope Interface, James Campbell

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

*NOTE THIS PROJECT IS CONFIDENTIAL*

In this project, I will investigate solutions to interfacing a fuel system with a fabric skin section

Digital Image Correlation System Design, Verification And Analysis, Tyler Kraft, Matthew J. Riczo, Andrew Chong

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Two dimensional digital image correlation provides an accurate and effective way to capture strain data on test sections with unusual or oblique geometries. The system requires a camera to record video footage, alignment fixtures and software to convert the footage into strain values. The system works by capturing the video footage of a specific portion of the specimen and comparing the movement of selected pixels. This is all done in the software GOM Correlate and Tracker. This test document outlines the setup, procedure, and validation steps to fulfill this goal. The setup involves a camera, tripod, blue lighting, and laser …

Autonomous Payload Design With Systems Engineering, Michael Downs, Christopher James Liebhart 2nd

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The design will be an autonomous payload consisting of auto deployment of a drone running an autonomous mission of mapping the terrain around a grounded rocket. The project is part of the Akronauts payload project for the 2022 Spaceport competition. It will include the development of a ground station for monitoring and controlling the drone and the transfer of live data to the station and a computer on board the rocket. The project will aim to use system engineering techniques to accomplish this in the hope of providing documentation and thus insight into the best way to develop a multi-disciplinary …

The Design Of The Payload System Of An Aircraft, Ryan Cooper

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The project group will design and build a system to unload packages for the Zips Aero Design Team's aircraft for the 2021-22 competition year.

Design And Testing Of A Feed-Forward Control System For Deployable Vortex Generators Dependent On Angle Of Attack, Solomon B. Whitmire, Christopher J. Chapanar, Kirklin M. Anderson, Nickalus R. Amon, Daniel W. Chech

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

A vortex generator (VG hereafter) is a common feature of an aircraft wing that disturbs the flow on the leading edge of the wing, thus energizing the boundary layer and reducing flow separation. For an aircraft experiencing flow separation, VGs can increase the lift-to-drag ratio of the wing and prevent stall; however, if flow separation isn’t an issue, the unnecessary frontal area of the VGs has the potential to produce parasitic drag. This study seeks to determine whether the use of a deployment system can improve the performance of VG’s by raising or lowering them depending on the angle of …

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 …

Developing A Uas-Deployable Methane Sensor Using Low-Cost Modular Open-Source Components, Gavin Demali

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project aimed to develop a methane sensor for deployment on an unmanned aerial system (UAS), or drone, platform. This design is centered around low cost, commercially available modular hardware components and open source software libraries. Once successfully developed, this system was deployed at the Bath Nature Preserve in Bath Township, Summit County Ohio in order to detect any potential on site fugitive methane emissions in the vicinity of the oil and gas infrastructure present. The deliverables of this project (i.e. the data collected at BNP) will be given to the land managers there to better inform future management and …

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 …

Space Dynamics Laboratory Payload Challenge: Autonomous Water Sampling Uav, Thomas Wheeler, Zachary Williams, Joseph Stack

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The following report has been completed over the course of the Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 semesters at The University of Akron by Joseph P. Stack (Aerospace Systems Engineering), Thomas J. Wheeler (Mechanical Engineering) and Zachary M. Williams (Mechanical Engineering). The purpose of this project was to create a payload system for the Akronauts Rocket Design Team to use at the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) Spaceport America Cup. The Competition as a challenge that is sponsored by Space Dynamics Laboratory specifically regarding payload systems. The challenge in very open-ended and allows student to identify their own scientific experiment and …

Swat Operations Unmanned Vehicle, John K. Zelina, Tyler Meadows, Ryan Cook, Mathew Fellows

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

During SWAT operations, it is common to have a barricaded suspect who may be armed and a serious threat to SWAT team personnel. In these cases, sending a robot into harm's way to assess the situation as opposed to an operator has become the standard. The purpose of this of this research was to design and develop an unmanned system for the City of Akron's SWAT Team that can be injected into these scenarios to improve outcomes and mitigate risk to SWAT operators.

Design And Construction Of An Optimum Method To Present Uncertainty Of Convective Weather Forecasts To Air Traffic Personnel, Anna K. Selchow, Austin Wright

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this design project was to develop a new weather display for air traffic controllers to utilize that shows the probabilistic hazard information for convective weather forecasts. Multiple iterations of maps were generated and evaluated for overall effectiveness in conveying uncertainty information for convective weather observations and forecasts with the final maps being tested through interviews with retired air traffic personnel. The goal of these maps was to improve upon current convective weather displays to more accurately show uncertainty and probabilistic hazard information to aid the air traffic controllers (ATCs) in providing guidance for aircraft pilots.

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.