Structural Materials Commons^™

Synchrotron X-Ray Diffraction Method For Continuous Strain Analysis Across Heterogenous Material Interface Layers, Sierra Damon

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Synchrotron X-ray diffraction method for continuous strain analysis across heterogenous material interface layers   The transfer of strain across a material interface is a relevant concept to quantify for numerous aerospace applications that involve coatings applied to substrates of different materials, particularly in the field of high temperature materials. X-ray diffraction (XRD) is a metrology technique capable of resolving strain within an arbitrary material by quantifying the shifts of Bragg peaks with respect to an unstrained sample and has seen increased use due to the capability of XRD to perform in-situ measurements on materials in extreme environments. Since different materials have …

Spark Plasma Sintering Of Alumina With Controlled Porosity, Harshail Patet

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Alumina is one of the most widely used advanced ceramics, serving applications that range from dense structural and wear-resistant components to porous thermal insulation and filtration systems. Porosity is a defining microstructural feature that governs mechanical strength, thermal conductivity, and permeability, meaning different applications demand different porosity levels from the same material. Spark plasma sintering (SPS) enables rapid consolidation by simultaneously applying pulsed electric current and uniaxial pressure, offering precise control over density, grain size, and porosity in significantly shorter processing times than conventional sintering. While prior studies have investigated the individual effects of SPS parameters on alumina densification, a …

Advanced Manufacturing And Materials Of A Bio-Mimetic Hoof For Space Robotics Applications, Benjamin Heckel

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Planetary surfaces often feature steep, uneven, and unpredictable terrain conditions that resemble some of the most challenging natural environments on Earth. In these terrestrial settings, certain animals have evolved to navigate complex landscapes with remarkable agility. One example is the mountain goat, an animal whose hooves have evolved for stable and precise movement across rocky, inclined surfaces. This biological adaptation provides a useful model for improving robotic mobility in planetary exploration. This study draws inspiration from that natural adaptation to develop a bio-mimetic robotic hoof designed to enhance traction, durability, and adaptability for extraterrestrial exploration. By replicating the mechanical properties …

Cavitation In Pumps And Propellers: Causes, Effects, Prevention, And Future Trends, Gillian Negron Burgos, Olivia Wilson

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

In this research, we will explore cavitation in pumps and propellers, including its causes, effects on system performance, prevention methods, and future engineering solutions. Cavitation occurs when the local pressure of a flowing liquid drops below its vapor pressure, forming vapor-filled bubbles that collapse and damage mechanical components. Disciplines such as fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and materials science contribute to understanding and mitigating cavitation in fluid machinery.   When vapor bubbles collapse near metal surfaces, they generate localized shock waves that cause pitting, erosion, vibration, and noise. These effects reduce efficiency, increase maintenance requirements, and shorten the lifespan of rotating machinery used …

Direct Ink Writing Of Functional Fiber/Granular Composites, Zhuoyuan Yang

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Direct ink writing provides a versatile manufacturing route for fabricating functional fiber and granular composites with controlled architecture, tunable interfaces, and customized material distributions. Fiber reinforced composites offer high stiffness, strength, fatigue resistance, and functional anisotropy, while granular composites provide scalable access to particle based structures with high material efficiency and broad resource compatibility. However, the additive manufacturing of these composite systems remains challenging. For fiber based composites, precise control of fiber placement, matrix impregnation, interfacial bonding, and freestanding deposition is difficult to achieve during printing. For granular composites, stable particle flow, controllable packing, binder infiltration, and shape retention are …

Optimizing Wind Turbine Blades Using Fiber-Reinforced Composites, Rayan A. Akeel

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

This project explores how fiber-reinforced materials can improve wind turbine blade performance by making them lighter and more durable. It will examine different fiber types, their fabrication methods, and their impact on efficiency and strength.

Mno2 Nanoscale Interface Modification, Alexander C. Skoppe

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Interface modification of carbon fibers has been shown to improve the mechanical performance of composites. In addition, interface modification of carbon fiber composites can impart multifunctionality into the resulting composite. This work will explore ZnO and MnO2 as interface modifications for use on carbon fibers. When exposed to high temperatures, carbon fibers undergo fiber degradation, leading to the need for low-temperature hydrothermal processes. This work will develop and characterize a nanoscale ZnO and MnO2 interface modification for use on carbon fibers. These nanomodifications will be developed with low-temperature processes, minimizing the fiber degradation that the fibers undergo. Fourier transform infrared …

Evaluation Of Chloride Diffusion In Concrete Using Bulk Diffusion Test And Scanning Electron Microscopy, Payton Davis

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Reinforced concrete is one of the most widely used construction materials in the world with many bridges and other major infrastructure consisting of such structural elements. A primary concern impacting the durability of concrete is chloride penetration in aggressive environments such as marine or coastal areas. In such environments, chloride ions can penetrate into the pores of concrete leading to the corrosion of embedded steel reinforcement which compromises the structural integrity of concrete. To investigate the issue, a comprehensive experimental program was designed and implemented which involved the preparation and testing of 31 different concrete mixes, each incorporating varying proportions …

A Comparison Of Beamforming Characteristics In Isotropic And Composite Plate Structures For Use In Structural Health Monitoring, Sarah Ketchersid

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Structural health monitoring in plate-like simple structures using phased array beamsteering of guided Lamb waves is useful in damage detection and evaluation efforts. Lamb waves can be effectively used for beamsteering using a linear array. The experimentation primarily focuses on beamsteering in the aluminum panel, which involves developing a simulation based on extracted data to visualize the dispersion of waves across the panel. By evaluating parameters such as slowness, velocity, and amplitude direction and variation for a specific metallic plate, the wavefront generated by a single wave source can be represented as a function of propagation angle and distance from …

3d Textile Preforms And Composites For Aircraft Strcutures: A Review, Abbasali Saboktakin

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Over the last decades, the development of 3D textile composites has been driven the structures developed to overcome disadvantages of 2D laminates such as the needs of reducing fabrication cost, increasing through-thickness mechanical properties, and improving impact damage tolerance. 3D woven, stitched, knitted and braided preforms have been used as composites reinforcement for these types of composites. In this paper, advantages and disadvantages of each of them have been comprehensively discussed. The fabric architects and their specification in particular stitched preforms and their deformation mode for aerospace applications have been reviewed. Exact insight into various types of damage in textile …

An Investigation Of The Magneto-Active Slosh Control For Cylindrical Propellant Tanks Using Floating Membranes, Manikandan Vairamani, Pedro Llanos, Balaji Sivasubramanian, Somnath Nagendra, Kevin Crosby

Publications

The phenomenon of sloshing is a substantial challenge in propellant management, particularly in reduced gravity where surface tension-driven flows result in large slosh amplitudes and relatively long decay time scales. Propellant Management Devices (PMDs) such as the rigid baffles and elastomeric membranes are often employed to counteract motion of the free surface. In the present study, we investigate an active PMD that utilizes a free-floating membrane that, under an applied static magnetic field, becomes rigid and suppresses slosh. This semi-rigid structural layer can thereby replace bulky baffle structures and reduce the overall weight of the tank. In this paper, the …

Manufacturing Process Simulation – On Its Way To Industrial Application, Dennis Otten, Tobias A. Weber, Jan-Christoph Arent

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Manufacturing process simulation (MPS) has become more and more important for aviation and the automobile industry. A highly competitive market requires the use of high performance metals and composite materials in combination with reduced manufacturing cost and time as well as a minimization of the time to market for a new product. However, the use of such materials is expensive and requires sophisticated manufacturing processes. An experience based process and tooling design followed by a lengthy trial-and-error optimization is just not contemporary anymore. Instead, a tooling design process aided by simulation is used more often. This paper provides an overview …

Propeller Design Requirements For Quadcopters Utilizing Variable Pitch Propellers, Ian R. Mcandrew, Elena Navarro, Ken Witcher

Publications

Unmanned aerial vehicles, UAV, has increases in the drastically in these past several years since their costs reduced. This research is based and built upon previous research presented in a conference. With the advent of commercial Quadcopters, four propeller systems, are used, being designed and used to operate the advantages of both flight and hovering. The basic design of their propeller blades has not evolved from the early days of manned flight when wooden fixed blades were used. In this paper that expands upon previous findings and discussions it explores the historical developments. Furthermore, how the expansion and reduction in …

Mechanical And Electrical Characterization Of Hybrid Carbon Nanotube Sheet-Graphene Nanocomposites For Sensing Applications, Jiukun Li

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The unique mechanical and electrical properties of carbon nanotubes and graphitic structures have drawn extensive attention from researchers over the past two decades. The electro-mechanical behavior of these structures and their composites, in which electrical resistance changes when mechanical deformation is applied facilitates their use in sensing applications.

In this work, carbon nanotube sheet- epoxy nanocomposites with the matrix modified with various contents of coarse and fine graphene nanoplatelets are fabricated. The addition of a secondary filler results in improvements of both electrical and mechanical properties. In addition, with the inclusion of the second filler, change in resistivity with mechanical …

Creation And Implementation Of An Underwater-Capable Vr Headset Through The Use Of Additive Manufacturing, Matthew D. Meyers, Nathan Sonnenfeld

Human Factors and Applied Psychology Student Conference

No abstract provided.

Late Morning Concurrent Sessions: Innovations In Aviation Technologies: Presentation: Relative Material Loss: A Methodology For Assessing Island Airport Steel Marine Bulkheads, Robert Ernsting, Constantine M. Koursaris

Aviation / Aeronautics / Aerospace International Research Conference

A July 2015 report from the Airports Council International – North America (ACI-NA) states “U.S. airports are long overdue for [a] major structural improvement projects. Most U.S. airports are aging, … and because of budgetary restrictions, they’re not aging well.”(Garcia and Clampet, 2015). The average US age is 40 years old with the youngest (Denver International) recently turning 20 years old. As airports continue to age, airport commissioners will struggle to find creative ways to either fund airport replacements or extend the service life of existing airport facilities (commonly referred to as service life extension projects or SLEP). Due to …

The Application Of Advanced Composites For The Construction Of Commercial Transport Aircraft, Mark D. Severson

Graduate Student Works

This individual Capstone project examined and evaluated current industry methods of testing, certification, and maintenance of advanced composite materials for the construction of commercial transport aircraft and the FAA regulations governing their use. The project critically compared and contrasted existing FAA standards and regulations governing the testing, certification, and maintenance of advanced composites for commercial transport aircraft structural applications with current industry practices to determine whether there were any areas of conflict between the two in order to accept or reject that current testing, certification, and maintenance procedures for advanced composites used in primary and secondary commercial transport aircraft structures …

Gossamer Albatross, Steve Elliott

ERAU Prescott Aviation History Program

Steve Elliott was active in the hobby of hang gliding, and was invited to join the Gossamer Albatross team in 1979. He assisted in its development and testing, and was there in a Zodiac raft when it became the first human powered aircraft to cross the English Channel and win the £100,000 Kremer Prize.