Electrical and Electronics Commons^™

Effect Of Anode Size On The Properties Of Constricted Hollow Anode Pulsed Plasma Source, Nirav Patel, Garret Seckinger

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

With the advent of ion thrusters, burns requiring large velocity changes can be performed with a fraction of the propellant required by traditional chemical rocket engines. However, current ion thrusters produce thrust in the order of millinewtons and thus cannot be viable for launching vehicles or burns requiring velocity changes in a small amount of time. Furthermore, current ion thrusters experience grid and component erosion, where the two grids at the termination of the nozzle slowly erode due to particle impact, and the hot electrodes degrade due to high thermal load. This limits the life of ion engines, which require …

System Integration And Validation Of The Cal Poly Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics Simulator Mk. Iv, Bricen S. Rigby

Master's Theses

The Cal Poly Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics Simulator (SADS) is an ongoing project that seeks to enable the simulation and validation of sensors, actuators, and control logic related to spacecraft attitude control. The SADS platform rests atop a spher- ical air-bearing device which allows for nearly frictionless rotation in all three axes. The orientation of the platform is controlled by four reaction wheels arranged in a pyramidal configuration. Over the past few years, there have been significant updates to the reaction wheel subsystem, as well as requests for a more capable central com- puter. Therefore, a new system architecture for the …

Mass - Modular Acoustic Suppression System, Julia Megargle, Michael A. Milner, Lucas Kaemmererer, Jonathan Corvera, Gabriel Choi, Emmi Cayer

Mechanical Engineering

The Modular Acoustic Suppression System (MASS) is a mass tuned damper that reverberates a membrane atop a cavity to absorb select acoustic frequencies produced by the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) within NASA's Artemis Human Lander. The height of the reverberation chamber is adjusted to mitigate a range of varying tonal frequencies within the human lander.

The Pid-Based Three Quadcopter Uavs Formation Control Under External Disturbance, Vo Van An, Trinh Luong Mien

Makara Journal of Technology

This paper presents the design and evaluation of a formation control strategy for three quadcopter UAVs, based on a PID controller in a leader–follower structure, under the influence of external disturbances. Each UAV employs a six-degree of-freedom dynamic model and utilises a cascade PID control architecture, in which the inner control loop stabilises the attitude. In contrast, the outer control loop regulates position and maintains the formation. The PID parameters are tuned using the Ziegler–Nichols method to ensure simple implementation and low computational cost. The performance of the control system is evaluated through simulations in the MATLAB environment for two …

Flexible Fault-Tolerant Multi-Die Fpga-Based Architectures For Varying Space Environments, Yosof Ali Seif El Din Ali Maklad

Theses and Dissertations

It is well-known fact that spacecraft’s electronic components operate in an extreme harsh and varying space environments, beside changing orbit or passing through Van Allan Belts during orbital course results of radiation levels change. This thesis focuses on SRAM-based FPGA systems on-board of such spacecrafts, that are commonly utilized in space applications’ critical applications due to their capabilities and flexibility to reconfigure, since these systems are vulnerable to frequent negative impacts of ionizing radiation, thus inducing soft and hard errors leading to disastrous failures that could jeopardize the entire spacecraft. The soft errors’ effects are frequent yet can be mitigated, …

Automation And Habitat Development For A Space Based Marine Life Environment, Logan Trimmer, Alexander Hang

Harrisburg University Other Works

This project was a cross-collaboration between the Environmental Sciences and Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics programs for the company Monolith Space.

The goal of this project was to design an autonomous system to be able to track qualities of water in an aquaculture system designed to be sent to space.

Wind Tunnel Instrumentation And Testing, Nicholas Marek, Abraham Mezera, Laura Jin, Hayden Smith, Curtis Cook

Student Scholar Symposium

The Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering was contacted by an automotive engineering firm seeking to use the college’s wind tunnel for gathering data on the aerodynamic performance of a proprietary prototype automotive door. Specifically, the client requested the quantification of the drag coefficient of the model at extreme wind speeds. The drag coefficient, a dimensionless number that quantifies the resistance of a specific geometric shape to airflow, will be a valuable datapoint for the client’s design iteration. Due to the sensitive nature of their work, the client has wished to remain anonymous. RBJCOE professors tasked a senior design team …

Pressure Switch Tester, Michael Starasinich, Andrew Dobson, Jordan Huschen, Mitchell Smith, Melvin Brown Iii

Honors Capstones

Abstract—- The Pressure Switch Test Stand is a comprehensive and automated testing solution designed to streamline the actuation and validation of simultaneously. At the core of the system is a PLC-controlled architecture that enables precise control and simulation of pressure conditions, replicating real-world scenarios to ensure accurate and reliable switch performance.

This test stand integrates robust mechanical fixtures, a reliable pneumatic control system, custom-designed electrical circuits, and a modular software interface, working in unison to deliver consistent and high-fidelity testing outcomes. Each pressure switch undergoes a sequence of pressure ramps and holds, with the system continuously monitoring switch states, activation …

Development Of A Cost-Effective Daq For Measuring Brake Performance In Race Cars, Adrin Alias

2025 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

This project explores the feasibility of creating a cost-effective data acquisition (DAQ) system for high-speed, real-time brake performance testing of Formula SAE racecars. The research addresses the limitations of the current MoTeC DAQ system currently employed by the team, which is costly and time-consuming to set up for on-car testing. The team will use a brake dynamometer for steady-state comparisons of different brake pad compounds (senior design project), but evaluating real-world performance requires on-car testing. By systematically comparing various hardware platforms, sensors, communication protocols, and storage solutions, this project aims to balance cost-efficiency with reliability and performance. The research evaluates …

Autonomous Landscape Exploration Rover Using Imaging Surface Navigation (Alexis), Noah Jones, Dominic Salupo

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective is to develop a small-form-factor rover prototype that can be used to prove out a novel traversal method for use on extraterrestrial surfaces. The novel traversal method being proposed is LIDAR/CV-enhanced navigation, provided by a detachable flight vehicle that can communicate with the rover. On planets with thin atmospheres, cold gas thrusters or similar may be needed, but for the scope of this project more traditional flight/propulsion methods will be used.

Vector Estimation For Continuous Tracking Of Observed Radio Signals (V.E.C.T.O.R.) Lunar Navigation System, Dimitry Melnikov, Evan Bartel, Andrew Burrier, Goran Gjorgievski

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

NASA's Artemis program requires precise navigation capabilities to establish the first sustained presence on the lunar surface. However, as launches bring necessary orbital infrastructure, the Artemis program will face a critical period during which reliable lunar navigation is not possible. To address this challenge, the V.E.C.T.O.R. system tracks assets, such as rovers and astronauts, as User Terminals relative to a pre-existing cell tower, or Base Station. To do so, the system leverages existing Base Station hardware to calculate the location of User Terminals in conjunction with existing communications infrastructure.

Production Box Cost Estimating Relationships For Dod Avionics, Carla J. Cisneros, Edward D. White, Brandon M. Lucas, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Robert D. Fass, Shawn M. Valentine

Faculty Publications

The authors use historical information obtained from the Cost Assessment Data Enterprise to estimate recurring production unit cost for DoD avionics via cost estimating relationships (CERs). The specific modeled responses include mean unit cost, median unit cost, and the 100th production unit cost (T100) utilizing learning curve theory. For T100, the authors adopt both a multiplicative and an additive error for CER comparison. Recommended CERs consist of the mean unit cost and the T100 utilizing a multiplicative error. Moreover, results reveal that weight has a significant effect on cost as well as a potential underaccounting of real price change or …

Interaction Of Particles With Plasma And Shock Produced By Pulsed Spark Discharge, Shomik Mukhopadhyay

Dissertations

Interactions of powders with high-temperature plasma and shockwaves occur in diverse scenarios, such as nuclear blasts, accidental industrial dust explosions, solid propellant combustion in explosive charges and when removing contaminants from surfaces. Electrostatic Discharge (ESD), known for generating shock and plasma, is a promising lab-scale technique for simulating these interactions. Studies with ESD involved placing powders near a spark-producing gap between electrodes and observing mechanical and chemical processes like particle motion and ignition. A limited range of spark conditions and material properties have been tested, which facilitated the development and validation of preliminary computational models describing this system. Significant gaps …

Enhancing Cybersecurity In Wireless Sensor Networks: Machine Learning, Blockchain And Future Perspectives, Ilemona Solomon Atawodi

Dissertations

Security in the Industrial Internet of Things encounters various security issues but the main issues can be broken down into three core issues: Availability, Integrity, and Confidentiality. Security challenges generally tend to be caused by a failure of the system in one of these areas or cause a failure in one of these areas. Therefore researching scalable solutions to these security issues is prudent to explore methods that could be applied to large-scale industrial IIoT with tens to hundreds of devices as well as small-scale systems on a tiny factory floor comprising of just a few devices. In our research, …

Design Of A Launchable Remote-Controlled Rover And Protective Aeroshell, Matthew Loewer, Colby Weeks, Lake Williams, Jackson Zazzaro

Senior Theses

Planetary rovers, vehicles that can traverse challenging terrain, have excelled in their exploration missions to other celestial bodies. They have been especially suitable for exploring Mars, as rovers such as Opportunity and Perseverance have collected valuable geological, atmospheric, seismic, and magnetic information from the Martian surface. Rovers will remain vital in future space exploration missions, and it is necessary to understand their design and functionality. This paper focuses on the design and prototyping of a miniature rover that can survive the rough Martian terrain while collecting and submitting environmental data for scientific analysis. The design is based off proven Martian …

Electronics Design For Krepe Atmospheric Entry Capsule Avionics, Matt Ruffner

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

This research documents the design, testing, and implementation of sensing, control, and communications subsystems for small atmospheric entry capsules. Atmospheric entry capsules pose a unique electronics design challenge given mission requirements, environmental constraints, and inherent risk involved in space based missions. Previous work on small satellites developed the CubeSat platform as a means of ensuring reliability after university-led small satellite missions experienced failures. The publication of the CubeSat platform allowed researchers to focus on the payload science utilizing a standardized form-factor and reusable electronics. Environmental and operational constraints of CubeSats and atmospheric entry capsules overlap and best-practices associated with building …

Gpu Based Monte Carlo Estimation Of Eddy Current Losses In Electromagnetic Coil-Core System, Adwaith Ravichandran

Theses and Dissertations

A novel parallelizable probabilistic approach to model eddy currents in AC electromagnets is presented in this research. Consequently, power loss associated with the formation of these eddy currents is estimated and validated using experimental data. Furthermore, predicting the effect of ferromagnetic alternating field enhancement on power loss in the source excitation winding has been an active area of research. Unlike a stationary field, an alternating sinusoidal field diffuses partially into the ferromagnetic material leading to a predictably sub-optimal field enhancement. To model these physics, finite element techniques employ nonlinear iterative solvers which are time consuming. A novel method is developed …

Crazyflie 2.1 Quadcopter Nonlinear System Identification, Nhat V. Nguyen, Hope Storro, John Plimpton

2023 Symposium

Quadcopters (quad) are used widely in many industries with crucial applications such as infrastructure inspection or package delivery. The Crazyflie 2.1 quad from Bitcraze provides an excellent platform for research and development. In this project, our goal is to perform system identification on the Crazyflie to propose a complete model. A gray box method is explored, which includes leveraging the parameters that are already known, to develop a set of equations. Through theory, simulations, and measurements, a complete quadcopter model is developed.

Instrumented Control Column For Optionally Piloted Aircraft, Andrew J. Klein

Electrical Engineering

Natilus, an aerospace company that is rapid-prototyping optionally piloted aircraft (OPA) for the shipping industry, needs a system that retrieves control column position data in order to manipulate flight simulator parameters in software. At present, a universally compatible system for all aircraft does not exist. Typically, established aerospace companies will sink significant time and money into developing proprietary systems for control column data retrieval as every aircraft is unique in its layout and linkage design. However, as a startup developing their first aircraft, Natilus does not have the privilege of modifying an existing sensor system to work with their HIL …

Design And Implementation Of High-Efficiency, Lightweight, System-Friendly Solid-State Circuit Breaker, Dehao Qin

All Dissertations

Direct current (DC) distribution system has shown potential over the alternative current (AC) distribution system in some application scenarios, e.g., electrified transportation, renewable energy, data center, etc. Because of the fast response speed, DC solid-state circuit breaker (SSCB) becomes a promising technology for the future power electronics intensive DC energy system with fault-tolerant capability. First, a thorough literature survey is performed to review the DC-SSCB technology. The key components for DC-SSCB, including power semiconductors, topologies, energy absorption units, and fault detection circuits, are studied. It is observed that the prior studies mainly focus on the basic interruption capability of the …

Design Of A Miniaturized Cubesat Tt&C Patch Antenna, Thomas A. Butterick

Theses and Dissertations

This effort explored the design of miniaturized rectangular microstrip patch antennas for application as a telemetry, tracking, and control (TT&C) on a CubeSat. The motivation for this research was the Grissom-P CubeSat mission planned by AFIT. The TT&C antenna selected for the mission exceeded the allotted size by over a factor of two. The studies performed included analyses of simply reducing aperture size, altering substrate permittivity, and layered approaches to antenna miniaturization. The primary approach to miniaturization was based on a virtually shorted patch antenna. Other approaches included an edge-shorted, slotted patch and the use of corner truncations for improved …

Robust Feature Matching For Visual-Based Aerial Navigation Using Registered Imagery, Luis Montenegro

Theses and Dissertations

This work leverages the SIFT detector along with known robust feature matching techniques for vision-aided sUAS navigation solutions. The proposed algorithm focuses on a sufficient number of features extracted, their quality and their distribution.

Topologically Optimized Electrodes For Electroosmotic Actuation, Jianwen Sun, Jianyu Zhang, Ce Guan, Teng Zhou, Shizhi Qian, Yongbo Deng

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Electroosmosis is one of the most used actuation mechanisms for the microfluidics in the current active lab-on-chip devices. It is generated on the induced charged microchannel walls in contact with an electrolyte solution. Electrode distribution plays the key role on providing the external electric field for electroosmosis, and determines the performance of electroosmotic microfluidics. Therefore, this paper proposes a topology optimization approach for the electrodes of electroosmotic microfluidics, where the electrode layout on the microchannel wall can be determined to achieve designer desired microfluidic performance. This topology optimization is carried out by implementing the interpolation of electric insulation and electric …

Assessing The Performance Of A Particle Swarm Optimization Mobility Algorithm In A Hybrid Wi-Fi/Lora Flying Ad Hoc Network, William David Paredes

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research on Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANETs) has increased due to the availability of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and the electronic components that control and connect them. Many applications, such as 3D mapping, construction inspection, or emergency response operations could benefit from an application and adaptation of swarm intelligence-based deployments of multiple UAVs. Such groups of cooperating UAVs, through the use of local rules, could be seen as network nodes establishing an ad-hoc network for communication purposes.

One FANET application is to provide communication coverage over an area where communication infrastructure is unavailable. A crucial part of a FANET implementation is …

Controller Platform Design And Demonstration For An Electric Aircraft Propulsion Driv, Rosten Sweeting

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the growth in the aerospace industry there has been a trend to optimize the performance of an aircraft by reducing fuel consumption and operational cost. Recent advancements in the field of power electronics have pushed towards the concepts of hybrid electric aircraft also known as more electrical aircrafts. In this work, a custom controller board for an electric aircraft propulsion drive was designed to drive a permanent magnet synchronous motor. Design of the controller board required knowledge of the topology selection and power module selections. Simulations of the system were performed using MATLAB/Simulink to analyze the overall performance of …

Utilization Of Characteristic Modal Analysis For Antenna Design Needed For An Afit Satellite, Scott C. Podlogar

Theses and Dissertations

Antenna design is a pervasive, growing field for electrical engineers. As the number of new materials and techniques increase so too does the demand and requirements pushing forth new innovative ideas. Among these ideas is a leading edge analytic technique called Characteristic Modal Analysis (CMA) originally credited to Garbacz and Turpin. CMA works to break down the current distribution along a structure in a way that can offer great insights into how that structure operates as an antenna. This technique has great merits in post design analytics but it is rarely seen to be integrated into the design process. This …

Small Satellite Development And Mission Design For Low Earth Orbit And Geostationary Transfer Orbit Missions, Ashiqur Rahman

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Aerospace Center formerly known as cSETR at UTEP is a NASA funded center of excellence in aerospace and exploration, focusing on strategic capability development in propulsion and robotic lander, lunar surface exploration, and small spacecraft technologies. To support the center’s mission for space exploration and to demonstrate advancements in small satellite technologies, the Aerospace Center at The University of Texas at El Paso is on track to develop and launch several CubeSats in next few years. A CubeSat is a small satellite that has become popular in recent years due to their low cost, low complexity and short development timeline. …

Combined Devices Of Facts Technology, Bahrom Ravshanovich Normuratov Associate Lecturer, Misrikhan Misrikhanov, Shukhrat Khamidov

Technical science and innovation

FACTS - Flexible Alternative Current Transmission System technology is a family of devices, each of which can be used individually and in concert with other devices to control the interrelated parameters of the electrical power system. The mission of FACTS technology is to improve the control of power flows in both steady-state and transient modes of EPS. Flexibility of Electric Power Transmission, applied as "The ability to adapt to changes in transmission system or operating conditions while maintaining sufficient operating limits in steady-state and transient modes". Controlled Flexible AC Transmission Lines - Flexibility from Electric Power Transmission means "AC Power …

Monte-Carlo-Based Analysis Of Traffic Flow For Urban Air Mobility Vehicles, Sara Ghayouraneh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The research conducted in this dissertation is focused on developing a simulation tool that can predict the traffic flow patterns of the Urban Air Mobility vehicles to alleviate some of the challenges related to their traffic management. First, an introduction to the concept of Urban Air Mobility is given, the usage of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast systems for Urban Air Mobility vehicles is suggested and dynamic addressing concept is introduced as an answer to a part of air traffic management and address scarcity challenge for Urban air Mobility vehicles. Next, in order to simulate the traffic flow patterns of the Urban …

Nitinol Robotic Arm, Brandon Cousino, Connor Sweatt

Thinking Matters Symposium

The goal of our project is to create a remotely controlled robotic arm using a nickel-titanium alloy (Nitinol) that exhibits “shape memory” tendencies and a 9-lumen tube. The arm must be able to move in all for directions (forward, left, right, backwards) with the control of a joystick and return to an upright position upon halting user input (thus requiring a two-way shape memory ability). The final product must operate without any unwanted twisting of the arm, crosstalk between the different nitinol wires due to heating, and be easily manufacturable. Easy replacement of the arm from the main mechanism is …