Aerospace Engineering Brown Bag Lecture Series, Manas Mantha and Alex Mealey

The March 18th AE Brown Bag Presentation featured Manas Mantha and Alex Mealey
Manas Mantha presented: "Experimental Studies of Simulant Decomposition in Vitiated Hot Crossflow"
Chemical warfare (CW) agents and toxins have widely become a topic of increased interest as the future fate of chemical warfare weapons is founded on the intensified threat terrorist attacks. Highly toxic CW agents such as sarin are especially important to study to better understand their properties and incineration under hot temperatures. This experimental research aims to utilize organophosphorus simulants, in this case diisopropyl methyl phosphonate (DIMP), which have similar chemical structures and combustion rates as their CW counterparts. This will be done through the reconstruction of a high temperature mixing tunnel with a vitiator at the test section along with an injection system that will be tested with air, argon, and CO2 gas before DIMP is utilized. Access to the test section to measure the flow will be through a cooled window that will enable LDV/PIV diagnostics of the flow field. The window must be cooled as the experiment will be running at high temperatures with preheated air in order to properly incinerate the simulant compounds. There are major gaps in our knowledge regarding high temperature decomposition of CW agents and simulants which experiments as such will help to design better strategies to counter weapons of mass destruction.
Alex Mealey presented: "Software Defined Radio and Position Fix Mechanism for Orca2"
Tracking and identification of resident space objects (RSOs) is important for understanding the data and science being transmitted by artificial satellites. The second Orbital Calibration mission (OrCa 2) is a CubeSat with a main objective to improve Georgia Tech’s ground tracking models and instruments through use of bright panels and reflectors. A secondary goal for OrCa 2 is to test a new position fix mechanism by which the CubeSat will use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to obtain its own location in space. Previous Georgia Tech CubeSats have relied on commercially bought devices to determine the position of the spacecraft, however these devices are expensive and difficult to work with. The newly designed position fix mechanism is low cost, and highly replicable, meaning it could potentially be used on future Georgia Tech CubeSat missions. The new position fix mechanism relies on common electronic components, including a HackRF One Radio and a Beagle Bones Black computer, to obtain a GPS location fix that will be transmitted to Earth ground stations. This presentation will discuss the assembly of the parts for the position fix mechanism, configuring both hardware and software for CubeSat specific applications, and testing the mechanism.