Structures and Aerodynamics Labs
The Pennsylvania State University
Aerospace Technical Labs
January 2022 - May 2022
Conduction of experiments in aerodynamics, structures, and dynamics, where the fundamentals of designing, planning, and conducting experiments in the aerospace industry were covered.
Background
AERSP 305 was an Aerospace Laboratory, where students conducted experiments in aerodynamics, structures, and dynamics. Fundamentals of measurement techniques was covered, including voltage, current, resistance, acceleration, force, strain, pressure, and velocity within various laboratory settings.
My Involvement
The course was broken up into several assignments, including two technical memos, two full reports, and two presentations; each split one-and-one between aerodynamics and structures.
The aerodynamics labs were conducted with a wind tunnel on campus. The first few experiments were analyzing the properties of the wind tunnel and calibrating all of the instruments. A hot-wire test was also calibrated for downstream data collection. A full report was written on the findings of these experiments. Another experiment was conducted to determine the section lift and drag coefficients of a 2D airfoil for various angles of attack and a presentation was given on the results. A technical memo was then written on a design lab focused on determining the lift and drag coefficients of two different 3D wings for the purpose of determining the coefficients of a wind tunnel fan wing of similar shape.
The structures labs were conducted in an aerospace structures lab. A full report was written on an experiment to find the best stiffness-to-mass ratio out of three I-beams with different reinforcements. An experiment was also conducted to analyze column buckling and the related loads to do so. The next experiment was a self-designed determination of the shear center of several oddly-shaped beams by using a beam with a known shear center to calibrate the sensors. A technical memo was then written concerning the analysis of a laser Doppler vibrometer that used validation cases and a tip-mounted accelerometer to acquire comparable data.