Skyport airframe: design and manufacturing

Many rural areas of developing countries lack the necessary transportation infrastructure to have reliable access to basic needs. This is particularly true for medical supplies. To combat the issue of insufficient access to vaccines in developing areas, the SkyPort project has developed the SkyPort UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). The SkyPort UAV has the vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) capabilities of a quadcopter, as well as the efficient, sustained flight of a fixed-wing aircraft. It provides a cheaper, quicker, and safer delivery method than existing alternatives for vaccines in areas that lack a reliable transportation infrastructure. The role of the SkyPort Airframe Design Team was to design and build the primary support structure of the UAV, which will house the payload, controls, and propulsion systems being designed by the other two SkyPort teams. The airframe consists of a lightweight and durable fuselage, wing, tail, and framing subsystems and it is designed to be modular so that parts are easy to replace and require minimal maintenance. Primary materials used in construction were foam, carbon fiber, and aluminum. Testing of the frame yielded a weight of 8.63 kg, minimum foam strength of 1.70 MPa, and a minimum factor of safety of 16 for the structural members of the frame. Although the weight of the airframe is higher than the desired weight, this was necessary in order to satisfy the strength requirements and protect sensitive electrical components during initial flight tests. In the future, this extra weight could be decreased by using less carbon fiber, lower density foam, smaller, lighter material for the structural members, or smaller fasteners

Conceptual Design of the Gondola of a Hybrid Airship Including Loading and Unloading Mechanisms

Transport has been a necessity to us since the early times, driving the chase for a better way of moving people, animals and goods from one location to another. The first airship flight happened in 1852, introducing airships to the world and making possible the controlled powered flight. After a series of high-profile accidents involving airships, airplanes were recognized as a safer transportation vehicle and gradually airships were directed for other applications such as advertising, sightseeing, surveillance and research. Nowadays, airships are becoming popular again, promoting their projection to fill a gap in the transport industry, in which they have advantages over other forms of transportation. As the cargo transport demand rises, new transportation options are being considered. Airships are receiving much more attention, as nations are now reconsidering their transportation systems. It can be forecasted, that with time, higher confidence in airship operations and wider scope of their applications, airships could take over of some of the airborne cargo market, due to their obvious competitive advantages. This work’s main goal is to develop an airship’s gondola adjustable to the user’s needs. Either transporting passengers or carrying cargo, airships make possible missions that in some other way would take a longer time to complete and would require much more resources to plan. The project also includes the conceptual design of a cargo container and corresponding loading and unloading mechanisms.O transporte tem sido, desde o início dos tempos, uma necessidade para o Homem, alimentando a procura por melhores formas de mover pessoas, animais e bens de um local para outro. Em 1852, ocorreu o primeiro voo de um dirigível, apresentando-os ao mundo e possibilitando o voo motorizado e controlado. Após uma série de acidentes de destaque, envolvendo dirigíveis, os aviões foram reconhecidos como um veículo de transporte mais seguro e gradualmente os dirigíveis foram direcionados para outras aplicações, tais como publicidade, turismo, vigilância e investigação. Hoje em dia os dirigíveis estão a tornar-se novamente populares, promovendo a sua projeção para preencher uma lacuna no sector de transportes, no qual têm vantagens em relação a outros meios de transporte. Com o aumento da procura pelo transporte de carga, novas opções de transporte estão sendo consideradas e os dirigíveis têm vindo a receber mais atenção, agora que vários países estão reavaliando os seus sistemas de transporte. Prevê-se que, com o tempo, maior confiança na operação de dirigíveis e um âmbito mais amplo para a sua aplicação, os dirigíveis poderão assumir o controlo de uma parte do mercado de transporte de carga aérea, devido às suas óbvias vantagens competitivas. O objetivo principal deste trabalho é desenvolver a gôndola de um dirigível, ajustável às necessidades do operador. Do transporte de passageiros ao transporte de carga, os dirigíveis tornarão possíveis missões que de outra forma levariam muito mais tempo a ser cumpridas e exigiriam muitos mais recursos a serem planeadas. Este projeto inclui também o design conceptual de um contentor de carga e respetivos mecanismos carga e descarga

TBD(exp 3)

When asked by the Aeronautical Engineering staff to design a viable supersonic commercial transport, most of the students were well aware that Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and other aircraft companies had been studying a cadre of transports for more than 30 years and had yet to present a viable aircraft. In the spirit of aviation progress and with much creative license, the TBD design team spearheaded the problem with the full intention of presenting a marketable high speed civil transport in spring of 1992. The project commenced with various studies of future market demands. With the market expansion of American business overseas, the airline industry projects a boom of over 200 million passengers by the year 2000. This will create a much higher demand for time efficient and cost effective inter-continental travel; this is the challenge of the high speed civil transport. The TBD(exp 3), a 269 passenger, long-range civil transport was designed to cruise at Mach 3.0 utilizing technology predicted to be available in 2005. Unlike other contemporary commercial airplane designs, the TBD(exp 3) incorporates a variable geometry wing for optimum performance. This design characteristic enabled the TBD(exp 3) to be efficient in both subsonic and supersonic flight. The TBD(exp 3) was designed to be economically viable for commercial airline purchase, be comfortable for passengers, meet FAR Part 25, and the current FAR 36 Stage 3 noise requirements. The TBD(exp 3) was designed to exhibit a long service life, maximize safety, ease of maintenance, as well as be fully compatible with all current high-traffic density airport facilities

The HAMMER: High altitude multiple mission environmental researcher

At the equator, the ozone layer ranges from 65,000 to 130,000+ feet which is beyond the capabilities of the ER-2, NASA's current high altitude reconnaissance aircraft. The Universities Space Research Association, in cooperation with NASA, is sponsoring an undergraduate program which is geared to designing an aircraft that can study the ozone layer at the equator. This aircraft must be able to satisfy four mission profiles. Mission one is a polar mission which ranges from Chile to the South Pole and back to Chile, a total range of 6000 n. mi. at 100,000 feet with a 2500 lb. payload. The second mission is also a polar mission with a decreased altitude of 70,000 feet and an increased payload of 4000 lb. For the third mission, the aircraft will take-off at NASA Ames, cruise at 100,000 feet carrying a 2500 lb. payload, and land in Puerto Montt, Chile. The final mission requires the aircraft to take-off at NASA Ames, cruise at 100,000 feet with a 1000 lb. payload, make an excursion to 120,000 feet, and land at Howard AFB, Panama. All three missions require that a subsonic Mach number is maintained due to constraints imposed by the air sampling equipment. The aircraft need not be manned for all four missions. Three aircraft configurations were determined to be the most suitable for meeting the above requirements. The performance of each configuration is analyzed to investigate the feasibility of the project requirements. In the event that a requirement can not be obtained within the given constraints, recommendations for proposal modifications are given

Design and Analysis of the BRAE Tractor Pull Tow Vehicle

This senior project discusses the design and analysis of a towing vehicle for the tractor pulling team and the BRAE department. This report examines different types of existing hand operated towing vehicles and their strengths and weaknesses and how they can be modified to design a custom tow vehicle for the BRAE department. The purpose of this report was to make transporting and handling of the modified pulling tractors in the BRAE department safer for the operator and bystanders

Efficient computation of bifurcation diagrams with a deflated approach to reduced basis spectral element method

The majority of the most common physical phenomena can be described using partial differential equations (PDEs). However, they are very often characterized by strong nonlinearities. Such features lead to the coexistence of multiple solutions studied by the bifurcation theory. Unfortunately, in practical scenarios, one has to exploit numerical methods to compute the solutions of systems of PDEs, even if the classical techniques are usually able to compute only a single solution for any value of a parameter when more branches exist. In this work, we implemented an elaborated deflated continuation method that relies on the spectral element method (SEM) and on the reduced basis (RB) one to efficiently compute bifurcation diagrams with more parameters and more bifurcation points. The deflated continuation method can be obtained combining the classical continuation method and the deflation one: the former is used to entirely track each known branch of the diagram, while the latter is exploited to discover the new ones. Finally, when more than one parameter is considered, the efficiency of the computation is ensured by the fact that the diagrams can be computed during the online phase while, during the offline one, one only has to compute one-dimensional diagrams. In this work, after a more detailed description of the method, we will show the results that can be obtained using it to compute a bifurcation diagram associated with a problem governed by the Navier-Stokes equations

Analytical and economic methodology for storage of large heavyweight equipment in industrial processes

Numerous studies concerning warehouse-design methodologies have been performed focused on the storage of products on pallets or of intermediate size and/or moderate weight loads. These studies, however, do not provide with optimal results for industries that work with equipment or objects of uncommon sizes and shapes and with large weights, which are difficult to move and involve high costs and complex operational actions, affecting to the production processes and interfering with the logistic processes or the supply-chain of a company. This study proposes an analytical methodology using economic and technical qualitative criteria that can be applied specifically to large and heavy equipment warehouses. Both quantitative aspects, such as availability and cost of space, and also qualitative considerations, such as flexibility requirements, impact on manufacturing process and risks associated, are evaluated. To determine an optimum implementation solution, several decision-making methods, such as Electra I & II and Analytic Hierarchy Process are employed with due consideration of multiple criteria. The results obtained are modulated and reinforced using a SWOT (strengths-weaknesses, opportunities- threats) and a Risk analysis to verify this single ultimate solution. The said process led to the establishment of a decision-making methodology suitable for any organization possessing large-scale storage systems