FLOW GOOD INC. Student Lead: Joss Mikeal Picardal Student Team Members: Derrick Drango, Samuel Drown, Elliott He, Liam Keily, Joss Mikeal Picardal Faculty: Dr. Ambady Suresh, Dr. Matthew Haslam, Professor Andy Gerrick
The current Liquid rocket test cell used by the Rocket Development Lab has technical limitations that prevent the testing of more powerful rocket engines. To take this leap forward, the current test cell will require greater propellant capacity, lower pressure drop, accurate measurement instrumentation, and less system transients. By implementing an additional set of tanks to hold propellant, longer burns can be sustained which can be used to profile longer burning rocket engine designs. By replacing the current cavitating venturis we can reduce pressure loss through the system resulting in lower tank feed pressures for the same mass flow rate allowing for more efficient use of pressurization gas. To ensure accurate measurements the implementation of turbine flow meters which will replace the current venturi flow meters will reduce pressure loss while making higher resolution and accurate measurements. Transients in the system makes it hard to precisely control the pressure and therefore the mass flowrate due to large spikes and dips in pressure through the current “bang bang” regulation system. These pressure transients can be reduced by replacing or enhancing the current regulation system design allowing for precise mass flow control.
HUSH Student Lead: Narayan Bal Student Team Members: Narayan Bal, Daniel Lavy, Aidan Ota, James Roman, Alex Tejeda Faculty: Dr. Ambady Suresh, Dr. Matthew Haslam, Professor Andy Gerrick
The HUSH Capstone team wishes to design a quiet drone propeller that is commercially available to drone users worldwide. Traditional drone propellers generate significant noise, which limits their use in noise-sensitive environments such as wildlife monitoring, urban mobility, and cinematography. Additionally, the noise of drone blades can cause adverse health effects such as increased anxiety as well as hearing loss. Team HUSH aims to make drones more usable by diminishing drone noise. The primary objective of this project is to design quiet propeller blades by optimizing blade count, pitch angle, taper ratio and blade features, while ensuring compatibility with a consumer grade drone’s existing motor and aerodynamic profile. Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation and acoustic simulation will be utilized to evaluate design iterations, followed by prototyping and real-world testing using sound level meters and flight performance metrics. To ensure the success of this objective, several design requirements and constraints must be carefully considered throughout the development process. For example, the propellers in flight must not produce a noise at volumes greater than the ambient noise of the environment. Other requirements like the flight speed must not decrease by more than 20%, and the propellers must endure a minimum of 300 flights must be met. Ultimately, this project aims to deliver a refined propeller design that achieves significant noise reduction while preserving the performance, efficiency, and weight limitations required for seamless integration with consumer grade drones.
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COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
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