Projects
AIAA DBF Competition
For my senior project, I led a team of twenty students to design and build an unmanned, electric-powered, radio-controlled aircraft for entry to this year’s AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) competition. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) invites all interested college/university students to participate in their Design/Build/Fly competition every year, where student teams will fully develop and demonstrate their own designed unmanned aircraft that will perform different mission objectives. The Lafayette College team was interested in competing in this task and tackled these challenges head-on. The airplane was designed with the AIAA rules and mission objectives as parameters in focus to produce the most optimal and effective plane.
In addition to acting as project manager, I assisted with analyzing the lift and drag of our plane utilizing computational fluid dynamics on several airfoils as a part of the aerodynamics sub-team. This was done through the use of both OpenVSP and XFLR5. I completed wind tunnel testing at various angles of attack in order to obtain a coefficient of lift and coefficient of drag, as well as used the fog generator to obtain flow visualizations as pictured above. This was done using a NACA 2412 airfoil which was selected in order to allow our aircraft to generate enough lift for the amount of payload. I chose the type of wing used as well, which upon talking to our pilot was determined that a Hersey bar wing would be sufficient in order to generate enough lift while also allowing for ease of manufacturing. I also completed a stability analysis using XFLR5 to determine the stability derivatives for the general flight of the aircraft. These are simply partial derivatives that indicate the sensitivity of various forces and moments to changes in various states of the aircraft, including translational/rotational velocities and angle of attack. As well as this, I did a drag analysis by modeling the full aircraft in OpenVSP and running analysis to find the zero lift drag coefficient using Hoerner drag theory.
Further, I assisted the structures subteam, and I designed the top plate to connect the wing to the fuselage and assembled pieces in both the fuselage and wing. I also assisted in creating the drawing files for the overall plane design.
Many challenges were faced during this course, one being the strict timeline of the AIAA competition in April, while navigating the pandemic and being remote. As project manager, I made sure there was open communication and also that everyone stayed on task with our schedule. Weekly meetings with each subteam were set in order to make sure everyone knew what they were responsible for. Another challenge faced was keeping within budget, which was mitigated by fully researching the cost and availability of components before purchasing.
Overall, the plane completed a successful 3 minute flight, as seen in the above video.
ME210 Car Competition
In a sophomore Manufacturing and Design course, students were tasked with designing and building a fully functioning dragster to compete in a team based contest at the end of the semester.
The course introduced techniques in computer-aided design and manufacturing as applied to mechanical components and systems, and we used these techniques to craft our vehicle. I also learned how to use many of the tools in the machine shop and how to employ 3D printing.
Specifically, I was the team's MATLAB Analyst, which meant I modeled the results and obtained a predicted race score as well as generated plots for the predicted position, velocity, and acceleration of our car. I then plotted these with our actual results. In addition to being the MATLAB Analyst. I designed the overhead wire system for our car. Since the track included an overhead wire, I designed adjustable arms that were able to change height as well as added vertical guide wheels to stay hooked on the wire. This was able to keep the car going straight. This also mitigated the challenge of the wires having varying heights throughout the track. An additional challenge was keeping the car going straight, since there was no steering system. This was overcome through the use of front and back bumpers. When the car turned slightly into the wall of the track, the bumpers readjusted the direction to keep moving forward.
Furthermore, I contributed to the braking system, which was a rear-wheel design. It consisted of three parts: a rotating bar fixed in rotation to the back axle, a slotted brake block, and a bar attached to a servo . The bar rotates through the photogate to track the position of the dragster, but goes past the vertical slotted block attached to the underside of the chassis. Once braking is activated, the servo will slide the servo bar into the slotted block and the path of the rotating bar. This obstructs the rotation of the bar and cause the axle to stop spinning. The force from the impact is distributed to the slotted block rather than the servo horn, reducing the risk of failure from the plastic servo horn breaking.
My team came in 2nd place overall for the race and 1st place for our design. The other part of the course consisted of machining a working gearbox utilizing various tools and machines, including a drill press, CNC lathe, manual lathe, and mills.
Zumo Robot Project
For the ME480 course I took, the goal was to design and implement finite state machines, model dynamic systems for control, and to design, analyze, and implement feedback control systems. More specifically, the class revolved around programming a Pololu Zumo Robot using Ardunio IDE with line following capabilities and object avoidance using both PI and PD control. The above video shows my completed final project.
Main challenges for this course included being fully remote for both the lecture and laboratory portions without ready access to collaborative feedback or teacher oversight. Despite navigating this challenge, my project was successful and my robot completed its assigned task.
Model Rocket Design
In my junior year introductory aerospace course, students were tasked with modifying the provided Rising Star Model Rocket kit to maximize the amount of payload taken to between 700 feet to 800 feet in altitude while maintaining stable flight.
Above is the optimized design for the rocket that I developed. Using OpenRocket Simulator, the CD and CP locations were predicted along with the Apogee. By changing various design components in OpenRocket, the altitude and payload were able to be optimized. Specifically, elliptical fins were chosen as they produce the least amount of induced drag. The shape of the fin orients more of the lift force closer to the body of the tube of the rocket because the fin is longer near the body tube. This in turn led to creating an elliptical fin shape, instead of the trapezoidal fins that were provided in the rocket kit. The ogive shaped nose cone from the original Rising Star rocket kit was chosen to be used in the design even though a parabolic nose cone shape would generate less drag according to simulations in OpenRocket and data from the manufacturer. [This is because 3D printing a new nose cone shape would cause the nose cone to be heavier than the one provided with the Rising Star kit. This is due to the fact that the given nose cone is a shell and using a 3D printed nose cone would increase the density because the provided 3D printers are not capable of printing a perfect shell. The body tube was cut to be 9 inches in length, which was reduced from the original length of 18 inches. The tube coupler was cut to be 3 inches in length and the shoulder of the nose cone was also trimmed, all in order to reduce weight.
I utilized MATLAB in order to predict the maximum altitude using the generated rocket trajectory code. Although flight was not successful, many lessons were still learned. One being that stability is extremely important. In the future, less weight should be added to the nose cone and the body should not have been shortened as much as it was.
RockOn NASA Workshop
As a participant of the RockOn Workshop at Wallops Island, Virginia through UC Boulder I worked as part of a small team to assemble a payload for launch on a sounding rocket. Our payload test equipment measured things such as acceleration and achieved altitude. The task required basic soldering skills, familiarity with electronic components, and programming ability. At the end of the workshop all teams were allowed to watch the early morning launch of the rocket, which was recovered at sea and returned to Wallops Flight Facility to allow us to retrieve our recorded data.