Firefighting Drone

Designing the propulsion system of a drone to fight fires in urban centers

Course: AAE 339

Design Goals: Our five-person team designed a drone intended to fight fires at upper stories of urban buildings. We were inspired by this design.
Outcome: We selected a hybrid-electric propulsion system because the drone will spend most of it's time in hover, making electric power an excellent choice, but may also require significant power to manuever, therefore making hybrid the best suited power source. Another benefit of a hybrid-electric power system is the redundancy. We chose to contain the power supply on the firetruck and wire the energy supply to the drone, rather than containing the energy subsystems on the drone for safety and to lower the weight the drone needs to carry.

eVTOL Hexacopter

Passenger-Capable. All-Electric. Revolutionary.

Group: Vertical Flight Systems Purdue

Design Goals: Our long-term goal is to design an eVTOL air taxi competitive with industry leaders. Our first iteration, shown here, was to test our propulsion and avionics systems and gauge our manufacturing capabilities. For our next iteration, which is in the conceptual design phase, we are focusing on the following constraints.
Simplicity; as a student org with a limited budget, our design choices are driven by simplicity in design and manufacturing. Passenger-capable; we are passionate about Urban and Regional Air Mobility and are designing vehicles that goes beyond package delivery.

Challenges: When I was Structures Lead, we had finalized our design and were ready to begin purchasing material and manufacturing. When we spoke with a manufacturing expert we learned that Aluminum 6061 is very difficult to weld for novices - very brittle and fails easily. I led the redesign instead using Steel 4130 and by thinning the round tubing outer diameters, I saved both weight and cost.
Before I was elected president our club had no funding. In my first semester as president, I raised over $10k through grants and immediately begin purchasing materials and supplies to begin manufacturing.

Roles: President, Structures Team Lead, Structures Member

Processes Employed: SolidWorks CAD and Analysis, Vibrata, MIG welding

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/purduevfs/home

CAD model of vehicle of structural assembly and notional models for battery, motors, and rotors.

Electric Blimp

Controls schema for electric blimp

Course: AAE 421: Aircraft Controls

Design Goals: Design forward, longitudinal, and lateral feedback controllers using Simulink for an electric blimp

Results: Performed open-loop analysis and performance, closed-loop analysis and performance, controllers design, and simulation for different trajectories. We met the design requirements with low error and earned a perfect score.

VTOL Business Jet

Mach 0.7 Jet for 6 passengers, 1200 km range with VTOL capability

Course: AAE 451: Aircraft Senior Design

Design Goals: Our nine-person team is designing and sizing the aerodynamic, propulsion, controls, and structural components for a VTOL business jet capable of a Mach 0.7 cruise speed.

Challenges: I joined a team where I knew one other member. At first I self-assigned and communicated what tasks I was working on, but no one else was communicating or working on the project. After a couple weeks, I stepped up as a leader and organized meetings, set agendas, and assigned subteams and tasks. My role on the team evolved into the Structures Lead position.

Roles: I modeled our vehicle is OpenVSP initially and more detailed models in SolidWorks. I also designed the primary and secondary internal structures and performed FEA to validate our design choices. We earned an A+ in the course and received positive feedback at our industry CDR presentation.

Processes Employed: SolidWorks, FEA, OpenVSP, VSPAero, XFLR5, Excel

Preliminary FEA of the wing to size the ribs and spars.

Sizing UAM Vehicle

Object-oriented MATLAB sizing code for a UAM vehicle

Group: System-of-Systems Lab

Design Goals: Dr. Dan DeLaurentis tasked my three-person team to write an object-oriented MATLAB code for sizing a four-passnenger UAM vehicle. We referred to Raymer's Aircraft Design and ran case studies for the effect of batery energy density and vehicle range on vehicle mass.

Tools Employed: MATLAB, Object-oriented Programming, Git

Aircraft and Rocket Design

Design an Aircraft Capable of "Catching" a Rocket

Course: AAE 251: Aerospace Design

Design Goals: Design a rocket to deliver a satellite payload to GEO and design an aircraft to catch all rocket stages; including engines and fairing. We worked in teams and learned about the aircraft design process.

Learned: Conceptual design, sizing, weighted matrices, cost estimation

Optimizing Hexacopter Rotor Arm Thickness

Applied Optimization Methods to eVTOL Vehicle Design

Course: AAE 550: Multidisciplinary Design Optimization

Design Goals: Utilized optimization methods learned in the course and applied to the structural design of the Vertical Flight Systems eVTOL vehicle. For the vehicle design, we did not know how thick to make the inner and outer diameters of the rotor arm tubing, so we iterated through designs and checked our work with analysis. Also, the structure is too complex to solve for the optimal solution with simple hand-calcs. So, I used Sequential Quadratic Programming and Pareto curves to solve for the optimal solution and compared two materials.

Penny Board CAD Model

Wheel Assembly of Penny Board Modeled in Catia

Course: CGT 163: CAD Modeling

Design Goals: For the final, individual project in CGT 163, we chose an everyday object to model. I modeled my roommate's pink penny board wheel assembly.

Lunar Coring Drill

Design, Build, Test

Course: AAE 418: Zero-G Flight Experiment

Design Goals: Design a Stabilizing Jig, Coring Bit, and Containment Mechanism for use on the lunar surface. The design must also function underwater, because it will be tested at NASA's Neutral Bouyancy Lab (NBL) before, possibly, going to the moon. There are a number of other criteria for dimensions, weight, temperature, and operating conditions.

Results: I worked on Analysis, Design, and Outreach. I modeled parts in SolidWorks and performed FEA to validate the design. I spoke to a class of 9th graders about our project and answered their questions about space and engineering, and also developed our website. I learned how to CAM and use CNC waterjet and mill equipment to manufacture the stabilizing jig. We worked with contract manufacturers to We successfully tested our lunar coring drill at NASA's NBL facility in June.

Processes Employed: SolidWorks, Milling, Waterjet, 3D Printing, HTML, Github

Website: https://Purdue-NASA-NExT.io/

System-of-Systems UAM Research

Assessing the Suitability of UAM Vehicles for a Specific UAM-Aerodrome Network

Group: System-of-Systems Lab: UAM Operation Limits

Design Goals: Upon joining the team, I took initiative and developed my own research questions and pursued my interests in UAM vehicle design. I led a small team of undergraduates and developed a Direct Operating Cost model to compare vehicles, built a vehicle database of over 40 UAM vehicles, and wrote object-oriented classes for my modules. My paper was accepted to AIAA Aviation 2021.