AE Brown Bag Seminar
Steven Yan, Daniel Marquez, Emma Joly
Friday, September 26
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Guggenheim 442
Pizza Served.
Daniel Marquez
Title:
"Failure Investigation of Student-Researched-and-Developed Solid Rocket Motor (SPS51)"
Abstract:
Georgia Tech Experimental Rocketry (GTXR) is developing a two-stage sounding rocket with the goal of reaching the Kármán line. Central to this effort are high-performance student-researched-and-developed (SRAD) solid rocket motors, which undergo extensive validation through simulations and static-fire testing prior to flight. Sustainer motor SPS51 recently failed its static fire test, and post-test analysis revealed that the root cause was a misplacement of the insulating thermal liner. This exposed the aluminum casing to high-temperature combustion gases, which reduced the casing’s yield strength and ultimately led to failure in hoop stress. This presentation will review GTXR’s motor development and testing approach, detail the circumstances of the failure, and highlight lessons learned that informed future motor designs and team culture.
Faculty Advisor: Wenting Sun
Steven Yan
Title:
"Control System Design and Validation of a Cold-Gas-Powered Lunar Exploration Drone"
Abstract:
Lunar lava tubes present promising sites for permanent lunar bases due to their natural shielding from radiation, structural stability, and favorable temperature across the lunar day–night cycle. To augment exploration of these geological formations, a lightweight, fully autonomous, cold-gas-powered lunar drone is being developed. This presentation focuses on the design, implementation, and experimental validation of the vehicle’s control system. A quadcopter-style cascaded proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller, capable of both attitude and full position control, was designed and tested in Simulink for different thruster configurations. Through simulation, the controller is shown to be capable of navigating to a target within a 10m radius sphere with a rise time of <10 s and steady-state error of <5%. For real-world validation, the controller framework is implemented in Python on a Beaglebone Black, which utilizes a TF Luna LiDAR sensor and a Bosch Sensortec BNO055 Intelligent 9-axis Absolute Orientation Sensor for state estimation and outputs pulse width modulation (PWM) signals to actuate proportional solenoid valves and a custom-designed servo-driven ball valve. Testing on 1-degree-of-freedom (1-DOF) altitude and pitch/roll rigs demonstrated the control system’s capability of reaching a target altitude with <5 cm steady-state error and maintaining a target pitch/roll with an accuracy of ±3°. These results demonstrate the feasibility of robust and low-cost control systems for cold-gas propelled drones in support of future lunar exploration.
Faculty Advisor: Brian C Gunter
Emma Joly
Title:
Viscosity Effects on Aeroelastic Behavior of Very Flexible Wings
Abstract:
The objective of this project is to validate and refine an existing aerodynamic model of the Pazy wing, integrate an aeroelastic solver, and examine the effects of viscosity, aerodynamic non-linearities, and 3D geometries . The Pazy wing is an existing benchmarking wing for aeroelastic analysis tools. Other research on the Pazy wing has assumed inviscid flow and linear aerodynamics, but the test data for the wing indicates these effects may be important at certain flow conditions. This project utilizes previous work to generate aerodynamic surrogate models for the wing using aerodynamic data from mfoil and a kriging function and integrate with the UM/NAST aeroelastic solver. This development effort focuses on correcting numerical irregularities present in the results of previous efforts, validating surrogate models, and examining the effects of viscosity and nonlinear aerodynamics.
Faculty Advisor: Cristina Riso