Patrick Browning

Flight Simulation of a Hybrid Projectile to Estimate the Impact of Launch Angle on Range Extension

A Hybrid Projectile (HP) currently under design at West Virginia University was simulated to estimate the effects of barrel launch angle and flight position of wing deployment. The projectile is similar to a standard 60mm mortar, except that is has been equipped to achieve extended range. A Simulink model was developed based upon external ballistics. The flight performance of the WVU-HP-60 was compared to a standard M720 60mm mortar. The developed HP was considered to be a tube-launched UAV, that transforms, not directly after launch but sometime after for optimal gliding, and must be modeled with different flight profiles because after transformation the aerodynamics drastically change. Two models of the UAV were created to allow for design of controllers. They were the launch model and the projectile flight model. It was found that the projectile may exit the barrel with a two degree variation of launch angle. The simulations show that range extension is still viable, with this barrel exit variation, to within 10% of the maximum achievable range. A confidence area was also developed to determine how far the launch angle and wing deployment position could stray and still maintain a significant amount of range extension.Copyright

ACOUSTIC DETECTING AND LOCATING GAS PIPE LINE INFRINGEMENT

The power point presentation for the Natural Gas Technologies II Conference held on February 8-11, 2004 in Phoenix AZ, published the presentations made at the conference, therefore required all presenters to submit their presentation prior to November 2003. However in the remainder of year, significant new test data became available which were incorporated in the actual presentation made at the Natural Gas Technologies II Conference. The 6th progress report presents the updated actual slide show used during the paper presentation by Richard Guiler.

Feasibility of an Energy Efficient Large-Scale Aquaponic Food Production and Distribution Facility

Today the United States is plagued by societal issues, economic insecurity, and increasing health problems. Societal issues include lack of community inclusion, pollution, and access to healthy foods. The high unemployment coupled with the rising cost of crude oil derivatives, and the growing general gap between cost of living and minimum wage levels contribute to a crippled consumer-driven US economy. Health concerns include increasing levels of obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. These epidemics lead to staggering economic burdens costing Americans hundreds of billions of dollars each year.It is well-known that many of the health issues impacting Americans can be directly linked to the production, availability, and quality of the food. Factors contributing to the availability of food include reduction of United States farmland, an increase in food imported from overseas, and the cost of goods to the consumer. The quality of food is influenced by the method of growth as well as imposed preservation techniques to support food transportation and distribution. At the same time, it has become increasingly common to implement biotechnology in genetically modified crops for direct human food or indirectly as a livestock feed for animals consumed by humans. Crops are also routinely dosed with pesticides and hormones in an attempt to increase productivity and revenue, with little consideration or understanding of the long term health effects.Research shows that community gardens positively impact local employment, community involvement and inclusivity, and the diets of not only those involved in food production, but all members of their households. The purpose of this work is to determine the feasibility of an energy efficient large-scale aquaponic food production and distribution facility which could directly mitigate growing socioeconomic concerns in the US through applied best practices in sustainability. Aquaponics is a symbiotic relationship between aquaculture and hydroponics, where fish and plants grow harmoniously. The energy efficient facility would be located in an urban area, and employ solar panels, natural lighting, rain water reclamation, and a floor plan optimized for maximum food yield and energy efficiency. Examples of potential crops include multiple species of berries, corn, leafy vegetables, tomatoes, peppers, squash, and carrots. Potential livestock include responsibly farmed tilapia, shrimp, crayfish, and oysters.The large scale aquaponic facility shows a lengthy period for financial return on investment whether traditional style construction of the building or a green construction style is used. However many forms of federal government aid and outside assistance exist for green construction to help drive down the risk in the higher initial investment which in the long run could end up being more profitable than going with a traditionally constructed building. Outside of financial return there are many proven, positive impacts that a large-scale aquaponic facility would have. Among these are greater social involvement and inclusivity, job creation, increased availability of fresh food, and strengthening of America’s agriculture infrastructure leading to increased American independence.Copyright

Simplified Interior Ballistics Analysis of a Hybrid Projectile Prototype

Structural analysis is a critical aspect in the successful design of tube launched projectiles, such as mortar rounds. Ongoing research conducted at West Virginia University has focused on a Hybrid Projectile (HP), folding-wing UAV design inspired by mortars. This has driven the necessity of a structural analysis of the prototype design to provide vital feedback to designers to ensure that the HP is likely to survive the act of launching. Due to the extreme accelerations during the launching phase, a typical mortar round experiences dramatic impulse loads for an extremely brief duration of time. Such loads are the result of the propellant combustion process. Thermodynamic-based interior ballistic computations have been formulated and were used to solve the dynamic equations of motion that govern the system. Modern ballistic programs solve these equations by modeling the combustion of the propellant. However, mathematical procedures for such analyses require complex models to attain accurate results. Consequently, the objective of this research was to create a ballistic program that could evaluate interior ballistics by using archived pressure-time data without having to simulate the propellant combustion. A program routine created for this purpose reduces the complexity of calculations to be performed and minimizes computational effort, while maintaining a reasonable degree of accuracy for the motion dynamics results (temporal position, velocity, acceleration of the projectile). Additionally, the program routine was used to produce a mathematical model describing the pressure as a function of time, which could be used as loading conditions for more advanced explicit-dynamic finite element simulations to evaluate the transient response and stress wave propagation of the prototype and individual payload components. Such simulations remove uncertainties related to the transient loads needed to assess the structural integrity of the projectile and its components.© 2012 ASME

Investigation of Plasma Exhaust Profile Manipulation Using Magnetic Fields

Investigation of Plasma Exhaust Profile Manipulation Using Magnetic Fields

CC blowing to add range with STOL capability to a Cessna 310

T conservation of mass of incompressible flows poses a major difficulty in their numerical solutions. That difficulty arises from the lack of pressure term in the conservation of mass equation. Several methods have been developed to introduce the pressure into the continuity equation directly or indirectly such as the Artificial Compressibility method and the Pressure Poisson equation method respectively. Unlike compressible flows, the incompressible flow dependent variables are the velocity and the pressure derivatives. Therefore, deriving a pressure equation, for incompressible flows, imposes additional constrains such as compatibility condition and Neumann boundary conditions for the pressure. In this study, we modified the continuity equation to calculate the pressure derivatives leading to Dirichlet boundary conditions which enhances the convergence of the numerical solution. The pressure is then calculated to within an arbitrary constant from the computed pressure derivatives. The present method is consistent with physics of incompressible flows, accurate, robust and efficient. Numerical solutions are obtained for the driven cavity problem for validation.C manufacturing demands engineering design and production planning to be fully integrated. This study proposes a generic feature association method and a detailed framework for the implementation of an advanced Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that can unify product and process models in order to fulfill customer orders with small batch and high variation production nature. A conceptual solution is introduced for the information integration between design configuration features and manufacturing process features. To achieve this, three feature classes, customer feature, capacity feature and welding feature are suggested. Specific effort has been spent to model welding features which are currently not well studied. With the associative integration between product design and process feature domains, a preliminary order acceptance and scheduling prototype system has been implemented within an ERP order management system and its semantic model is demonstrated within a unified and multi-facet feature framework.T interaction between a solid surface of an air vehicle and surrounding air is knows as the main phenomenon affecting the aerodynamics. The surface roughness has a great effect on the aerodynamic performance by reducing the drag and delaying the separation at high Reynolds numbers which results in increasing the lift coefficient. The effects of different types of paint with different types of finish on the aerodynamics of commercial aircrafts have been investigated in this research. It was shown that reducing the surface roughness leads to drag reduction and lift improvements. However, the surface roughness non-uniformity can result in early separation. The paint quality was found to be very critical in protecting the composite body of the aircraft against excess loads and UV radiation as well as maintaining the integrity of the fuselage and wing.

Shopfoil: Design of Unoptimized Airfoils

The desire and demand to fly farther and faster has progressively integrated the concept of optimization with airfoil design resulting in increasingly complex numerical tools pursuing efficiency often at diminishing returns, while the costs and difficulty associated with fabrication increases with design complexity. This paper establishes a method utilizing numerical tools for unoptimized design, focused on reducing the complexity of airfoils for applications where aerodynamic performance is less important than the efficiency of manufacturing. We applied this method to the development of a low Re, disposable Hybrid Projectile requiring a 4.5:1 glide ratio, resulting in a series of airfoils which are geometric approximations to highly contoured cross-sections called ShopFoils. This series of airfoils both numerically and experimentally perform within a 10% marigin of the SD6060 at low Re while reducing manufacturing costs and meeting the requirements of the HP platform.Copyright

OPERATING PROCEDURE FOR THE PORTABLE ACOUSTIC MONITORING PACKAGE (PAMP)

The Portable Acoustic Monitoring Package (PAMP) has been designed to record and monitor acoustic signals in high-pressure natural gas (NG) transmission lines. Of particular interest are the three acoustic signals associated with a pipeline fracture. The system is portable (less than 30 lbm) and can be used at all line pressures up to 1000 psig. The PAMP requires a shut-off valve equipped 1/2 inch NPT access port in the pipeline. It is fully functional over the typical pressure range found in the natural gas transmission pipelines in the West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio areas. With the use of the PAMP, a full spectrum of acoustic signals can be recorded and defined in terms of acoustic energy in decibels. To detect natural gas pipeline infringements and leaks, the acoustic energy generated inside the line is monitored with a sensitive pressure-equalized microphone and a step function type {Delta}p transducer. The assembly is mounted on a 1000 psig pipe fitting-tree called the PAMP. The electronics required to record, store and analyze the data are described within this report in the format of an operating manual.