Aerospace Engineering Brown Bag Lecture Series, ft Austin Rose and Pranav Krishnamurthy

The April 2 Aerospace Engineering Brown Bag Lecture Series featured Austin Rose and Pranav Krishnamurthy.
Austin Rose presented, “The Development of a Hybrid Launch System for Small Satellite Deployment”
With the total number of satellites orbiting earth scheduled to increase by a factor of five over the next few years, the need for a cheaper and more environmentally conscious way of getting to space is more pertinent now than ever before. Given that the typical payload fraction is between 1 and 10%, any reduction in the amount of fuel needed would be significant both financially and environmentally. SpaceShot provides the conceptual development and simulated analysis of a hybrid launch system, from a primary maglev track to a secondary on-board propulsion system, for smaller unmanned missions, mainly the deployment of small satellites.
Pranav Krishnamurthy presented, "3-DOF Longitudinal Trim of an Over-actuated eVTOL Aircraft in Transition"
As many companies begin to test prototype eVTOL aircraft, finding the optimal trimmed transition corridor between rotor-borne and wing-borne flight is critical for concepts with tilting rotors and wings. This presentation details the work done as part of a conceptual vehicle design of a eVTOL aircraft at Georgia Institute of Technology. A three degree of freedom model with linear aerodynamic stability derivatives and a surrogate propulsion model was developed for the given aircraft. Interactional effects between rotors and lifting surfaces were neglected during the first development iteration of the tool. The optimizer SNOPT (Sparse Nonlinear OPTimizer) was used to drive the minimization of a specified objective function. Results provide essential insight into the optimal control and constraints of the transition for eVTOL aircraft.
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About the Series:
The Brown Bag Lecture Series is a tradition that gives select AE undergrads and grad students a unique opportunity to share their research before an audience that includes both their peers and their academic mentors and advisors.
ae.gatech.edu/ae-brown-bag-le...