BWB Blended Wing Body

BWB – Blended Wing Body

Our goal is to design and build a high efficiency aircraft, which has zero emissions, is highly reliable, and can travel great distances considering its size. We want to incorporate these features in a practical design that can be used for many real-world applications, which could include: emergency medical supplies and package delivery, and surveying purposes. www.bwb2.org

SAE Cargo Plane

The SAE Aero Design competition hosted by SAE and Lockheed Martin brings together contestants from various universities around the world to design, build, and fly remote control aircraft. The competition challenges teams to design an aircraft to carry as much payload weight as possible while keeping within the constraints set forth by the rules. The scoring is based on the maximum payload lifted, maximum payload prediction, oral presentations, and written reports. A team must integrate various concepts in aerospace, systems, and mechanical engineering to be successful at the competition.

We hope to do better that the 2007 team who’s website is

http://my.fit.edu/cargoplane/

Morphing wing

Morphing wing technology changes the geometry of an aircraft wing to achieve greater overall efficiency during flight. This project will apply morphing wing technology to design and construct a variable-camber and variable-angle of attack NACA 2415 airfoil. The airfoil will then be translated into a functioning wing with a span of five feet and a chord length of one foot. The wing will morph during flight to achieve the optimum aerodynamic geometry and thus improve the overall efficiency of the aircraft. The morphing motion will allow for greater lift during take-off conditions, decreased drag during cruise flight, and increased drag during landing conditions.

The frame of the wing will be constructed from a strong, lightweight material such as aluminum. The skin of the wing will be made from a resilient, tear-resistant elastic fabric such as rip-stop nylon. The materials used to fabricate the wing will be discussed later in this report. Once the wing is constructed, it will be mounted to a model airplane specifically suited for the wing’s dimensions.

The ultimate goal of this project is to have a working model of the proposed design consisting of a variable-camber, -thickness, and -angle of attack wing surrounded by a flexible skin. In order to reach this goal, several steps must be taken.

Northrop Grumman Design Team

The Northrop Grumman Tanker Lighting Design Team project outlines the fabrication of a proof of concept LED display that will enable communication from the boom operator to the receiving pilot during air-to-air refueling operations. Since the display is a visual device, it will help maintain radio silence during refueling. The display will also provide the receiving pilots with more information about their position than the current refueling position lights do.

With guidance from Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Melbourne and the cooperation of Lighting Science Group in Satellite Beach, a 3’x3’ LED display will be used to demonstrate this more efficient aircraft communication concept. The final display will accept simulated refueling boom position inputs from a 3-axis video game controller and show the corrective action (up, down, left, right, forward, aft) on the display. It is intended to reduce the number of accidental break-offs and emergency break-offs by giving pilots more information on their position and therefore, the stresses they are putting on the boom.

This new tool is designed to replace the outdated and ineffective Pilot Director Lights which are currently in use to guide refueling aircraft into the proper position. The design project aims to prove that an LED “screen”, similar to that used on the Goodyear blimp, can be used to make air refueling safer and more efficient.

Liquid-Fueled Aerospike

The Liquid-Fueled Aerospike project will be the first liquid powered rocket engine designed, built, and fired on the campus of Florida Tech. To challenge the group members even further, it was decided to use an aerospike nozzle instead of a conventional bell nozzle. Methanol fuel and liquid nitrous oxide were chosen as the propellants for the design. With sustained temperatures exceeding 2500K and an exit mach number of 2.55, the design requires precision and a thorough understanding of aerospike ideals. The engine has been designed for a 250 lbf thrust and a 10-second burn time. This takes concepts learned in all aspects of Aerospace Engineering and fuses them together in a real-life project that truly tests the understanding of the students involved

The most complex system to design is going to be the plumbing system, to insure that the pressures of the propellants are at the desired pressure when they reach the injectors, and the combustion chamber, due to the chemistry involved. The plumbing and fueling system is going to be designed for a final chamber pressure of 300 psi. A safety design that will be included in the plumbing system is going to be multiple burst disks, located at every major turn in the nitrous oxide line. The burst disk will burst if the pressures become greater than the specified tolerance of the disk. This is because after each turn there is a possibility of a pressure drop low enough for the liquid to vaporize and subsequently react to the pressure drop all the way down the line. One way valves will be installed in the plumbing system at main pipe out of the tank. This provides additional safety if the previous happens, preventing the nitrous oxide gas from making its way into the main tank system.

DETONATION TUBE

http://my.fit.edu/det_tube/

The detonation tube apparatus will essentially be a shock tube, consisting of a driver section, a flange with a diaphragm, and a driven section. The driver section will be the combustion chamber which will have a fueling apparatus attached to it along with a Pressure gage, a Pulse plug, and a Ball valve. The fueling apparatus will have a Hydrogen tank, a Pressurized air tank, a Helium tank, and a Vacuum attached to it. For the purpose of controlling the pressures and flow of our gasses, there will be two solenoids connecting the tanks to the fueling apparatus. The gasses will enter the fueling apparatus thru the solenoids. The gases will continue thru a flame arrestor, and past a one way valve to get to the combustion chamber. The driven section will have at least two pressure gages attached to a data acquisition device, which will then send experimental data to a computer for post processing. Generally speaking our system will be set up as shown in figure 1.

Figure 1

Each of the tanks will be connected to a regulator and two solenoids. One of these solenoids will be to prevent leaks under low pressures during the vacuuming procedure, and the second solenoid will be used to control the fueling rate, as well as being a final line of defense to protect against pressurized combustion gasses from getting back into our tanks and vacuum. The design also incorporates a flame arrestor to prevent flames from getting back into the fueling apparatus The flame arrestors will serve as a safety precaution in the event that the flame from the combustion somehow were to get back past the one way valve.

The solenoids will connect to the fueling apparatus, and will be electronically controlled to allow the gases to flow as required for testing procedures. The pressure gage in the driver section will be used along with the idea of partial pressures to get an appropriate mixture of our combustion gases.

SEIMENS

Our team is called Siemens Snubber team, and we are composed of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering students that are working in close collaboration with four of the MAE Florida Tech faculty (Dr Hsu, Dr Kirk, Dr Subramanian, and Dr. Rusovici) and Siemens based out of Orlando.

Our work has us looking at the shape, and location of snubbers on turbine blades in an effort to increase the life cycle of the blades while making sure the mass flow travelling through the turbine is not adversely affected. Over the past 5 months we have been focused on Computational Fluid Dynamics and Structural Analysis, through the use of the ANSYS, Fluent, and Gambit programs.

We are looking forward to next semester when we plan to do a lot of experimental testing and fabrication of a variety of different shapes and profiles through the use of our CNC cutter found on campus.

TURBINE BLADE

Renewable and “green” alternative sources of energy are becoming a greater need considering the current energy and economic crisis around the world. One of the best candidates for such energy source is wind energy, since it is readily available and eco-friendly, producing pure mechanical energy with no emissions of any sort. As such, wind turbine design is a constant area of growth for renewable wind energy production. One major challenge wind turbines still have is being able to produce energy in low wind speed regions. In order to remedy this problem, wind turbine blades can be aerodynamically enhanced to improve the overall efficiency, lift, and power produced by the wind turbine blades at lower wind speeds.

One such modification is the use of a tubercle leading edge. Tubercles are an example of biomimicry, inspired by bumps on humpback whale fins, and it is believed that this feature is what gives these whales their maneuverability. Thus, this technology is a perfect example of cross-disciplinary inventions, where Marine Biology has inspired a new Aerospace Engineering design. Preliminary analysis indicates tubercle technology outperforms conventional blade designs, by allowing for higher blade pitch angles and increasing the aerodynamic lift.

The goal of this project is to create, investigate and optimize the tubercle leading edge wind turbine blade design by comparing it with a conventional turbine blade profile and optimizing the tubercle amplitude, frequency, and shape. The target goal is to show an increase in lift without a significant drag penalty at high angles of attack, which will allow for better low wind speed energy extraction as well as wider areas of wind turbine applications.