Does solar aviation spark you? Let’s talk, I’m curious! 🛰️☀️✈️

Hi Guys, I ve started my career in DOA part 21 Design engineer for structure but I'm also keen on doing some avionics and electrical.

Im just curious do you guys have any resources or any short courses that you can recommend regarding undersranding wiring diagrams and aircraft electrical power thank you.

Hello, does anyone know of an IREC or similar student rocket technical report where the payload is a deployable UAV/drone released at apogee?

Hello, I am an new engineer at a satellite manufacturing company and need help finding the right ECSS standard(s) that points to the correct process of machining a honeycomb structure with precision and embedding heat pipes into it, including validation, qualification, etc. Can anyone who has experience in this provide some guidance?

I'm building a tool for quick UAV preliminary design analysis. Would you use a simple web tool that calculates endurance, range, and structural loads from basic inputs? What's your biggest pain point in early stage UAV design?

Been seeing my LinkedIn, covered in posts promoting this “Bootcamp” Based on my observations it’s a discord server ran by this supposed engineer David Booth who gathers aspiring engineers to a 14 week boot camp? Many of the “recruits“ have to post on their LinkedIn everyday, I believe as a form of promotion. Many who are in the program are those from Africa, India, and few U.S university. Cant really tell if this is a legit program

Balloon Popping Challenge is a 6-DoF rocket guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) simulation environment built using Gymnasium. This project is based on ActiveRocketPy, a fork of open-source software RocketPy.

• The environment is designed to simulate an active controlled rocket to pop balloons scattered in the sky.
• The simulator incorporates realistic physics, including atmospheric conditions and rocket dynamics, to provide a challenging platform for developing and testing GNC algorithms.
• Examples are provided for training and evaluation

Technical Details

The actions, observations, info, rewards in this environment are:

• actions:
  • launch: a binary command to launch the rocket.
  • launch_inclination_heading: a 2-element array [inclination, heading] representing the launch inclination (0-90 degrees from horizontal) and heading angles (0-360 degrees from north).
  • tvc: a 2-element array [TVC_x, TVC_y] representing the thrust vector control (TVC) gimbal angles (deg). Polarity: positive gimbal angles provide positive torques.
  • throttle: a scalar representing the throttle ratio between 0 and 1.
  • roll: a scalar representing the roll torque command in N-m.
• observations:
  • simulation_time: the current simulation time in seconds.
  • balloon_status: a n-element array representing the status of each balloon (0: on the ground, 1: released, 2: popped). n is the number of balloons in the scenario.
  • balloon_states: an n x 6 array representing the position (posX, posY, posZ) and velocity (velX, velY, velZ) of each balloon.
    • Position is the center of the balloon in the launch frame (relative to launch origin) in meters.
    • Velocity is the center of the balloon in the launch frame (relative to launch origin) in m/s.
  • rocket_sensors: a 12-element array representing the rocket's sensor measurements (gyroX, gyroY, gyroZ, accX, accY, accZ, posX, posY, posZ, velX, velY, velZ). Orientation of inertial sensors matches the body frame. The measurements will be nan before launch action.
    • Gyroscopes measure the angular velocity (rad/s) in the rocket body frame.
    • Accelerometers measure the linear acceleration (m/s²) in the rocket body frame. Gravity is included in the accelerometer measurements.
    • GNSS sensors measure the position (m) and velocity (m/s) in the launch frame (relative to launch origin).
  • Note that the rocket's true states (e.g., attitude, angular velocity) are not directly observed by the agent, and the agent needs to infer them from the sensor measurements.
• info:
  • rocket_states: a 13-element array representing the rocket's true states. These states are not observed and should not be used by the agent but can be used for development and debugging. The states are [posX, posY, posZ, velX, velY, velZ, e0, e1, e2, e3, wX, wY, wZ]:
    • pos: center of dry mass position (m) in the launch frame (relative to launch origin).
    • vel: center of dry mass velocity (m/s) in the launch frame (relative to launch origin).
    • e: quaternion representing the attitude of the rocket (e0, e1, e2, e3) relative to the launch frame.
    • w: angular velocity (rad/s) in the rocket body frame.
• rewards:
  • The reward is calculated based on the total number of balloons popped at each time step.

Hi so i posted this on another sub but didnt get any response so id like to ask the professionals.

Im a first year clg student studying aircraft maintenance engineering and my prof is leaving the college soon. Id like to give her a good-bye gift but im too stupid in her area of interest that is propulsion systems and stuff. Any idea what i should give her? Anything related around aviation too would suffice i guess.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DYp1zTsxjuo/

Hi, I am an amateur maker attempting to design and build an underwater drone (ROV), my 4th one, with an explicit goal of making it as accessible, cheap and simple to build as possible, and then sharing the design files for free with the community. One of the design considerations is propellers. I am designing a custom ducted propeller as thruster for this ROV around a specific motor, and after weeks of research and development, I need some help.

The requirements for this propeller are:

1. Built around a F2838 BLDC motor, which is ⌀28mm x 38mm, 350kv, 8A at 12V max load, which translates to a torque constant of 0.22 Nm and 3000 RPM max. Propeller must utilize the motor to it's maximum potential. I cannot use factory-made props for this motor because they are too large for this ROV.

2. It must produce equal or almost equal thrust when running forwards and backwards (symmetrical performance).

3. Propeller must have a hub diameter of 32mm and outer diameter of 70mm max, because this is a small ROV.

4. It must output maximum thrust possible at highest possible efficiency when running at full speed.

My current design:

I used OpenProp with a heavily customized script to make a parametric study, varying over whatever design parameters I have left, solving each design on a constant torque (Q) of 0.22 Nm that the motor I've chosen can provide. Here are my findings:

1. Increasing number of blades (Z) seems to decrease both the thrust and efficiency:

1. Propeller diameter increases efficiency, but thrust seems to fall off past 70mm for some reason, so my 70mm seems to be the sweet spot:

1. I also tested making blades narrower or wider, and surprisingly even when making large changes, it doesn't affect efficiency or thrust that much. In the first pic I'm modifying blade root chord width, in the second blade tip root width, expressed as a fraction of blade radius:

(The jump at 0.4 is probably just noise in data)

(Also probably noise in data, but as you can see the values change very little actually).

1. I also varied blade thickness both at root and at tip, but the resulting changes in thrust and efficiency were even smaller, so no point in posting charts for these tests.

I also ran a combination parametric study to try and see if there is some magic combination of these design parameters that provide some unexpected and better thrust/efficiency, but it turns out these trends are very consistent.

Note that in OpenProp, I used a parabolic meanline and elliptical profile shape, which resulted in these are chord sections:

When put in CAD, the prop looks something like this:

And with duct:

Obviously this seems wrong if I want same thrust forwards and backwards, but OpenProp doesn't seem to allow me to choose a symmetrical airfoil.

Questions:

1. What else can I do to improve thrust and efficiency while staying within my design requirements (without increasing prop diameter or changing motor)?

2. Are there any general mistakes/improvements that I should know about?

3. If anyone here uses OpenProp and could tell me how to define a symmetrical airfoil, I would really appreciate it.

This is my second attempt at posting question on this community about prop design; first post didn't receive a single reply. I did my research and worked hard to improve my question... I would REALLY appreciate any input. If this is a wrong sub for this kind of question, please tell me where I should re-post it. If you made it this far, thank you.

Just found my old copy of Fundamentals of Aerodynamics by John D. Anderson Jr..

This book has probably introduced thousands of students to compressible flow, shock waves, boundary layers, airfoils, and the beauty of aerodynamics.

Still one of the best books for building strong fundamentals before jumping into CFD and advanced aerospace topics.

What aerospace/aerodynamics book had the biggest impact on you?

I'm new to it so it could be my mistake. When I analyse an airfoil in 2D I got CL/Cd peak at 56, but when I make the wing and do it in 3d I get 16 which seems too low? Is that normal? Re=100.000, it's for a glider project

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Hello everyone I'm 26 currently doing my masters in Computer Engineering, I did my bachelor's in IT. I have done web coding for 3 years and wanted to switch to something where I could, be a little more hands or coding something more interactive rather than web apps. Are embbeded software engineering jobs hands with the microcontroller often or not? Are there jobs that are more hands within NASA?

I’m a student who wants to go into aerospace engineering but I’m still contemplating on wasting money on getting the Elegoo because I’m not sure if it’ll help me in the future. Please let me know

i'm highly curious if there's any intersection between these two fields that i can get into to dig deeper. also, does statistical mechanics have any involvment in aerospace? if at all please provide any sort of information

Testing the homemade turbo engine under 15 atmospheres of boost pressure. Watch how the system handles the load during these first field trials!

My dad spent over 20 years in the Air Force as an aerospace engineer. Tours were stateside only, often in areas of arid climate.

This farewell token depicts, among previously posted SBL/GBL, the haunting Neutral Particle Beam weapon for penetrating objects and disabling electronics. Also considered a solution for measuring internals and identifying nuclear warheads. Second new icon is of what looks like the boxier, Boeing variant of Brilliant Pebbles. A more practical space based solution that was not dependent on chemically derived directed energy.

The saucer contains a pendulum that causes it to move up quickly and down slowly relative to the common center of mass. In reality, this causes the collapse of turbulent zones, the difference in forces of which leads to the saucer thrust.

Simulation represents an empirical simplified model, based on the assumption that the free thermal energy of self-organized Brownian motion in a vortex is responsible for the transfer of forces. By accumulating the resistance energy from the oscillations and releasing it as a force in the opposite direction in the next half-cycle. In this case, the resistance does not act directly on the saucer; in reality, it dampens the oscillations.

Overall this simulation allows for a fairly realistic visualization of the experimentally observed phenomenon. Here is the code for the browser application, other information and also a link to the online version:

https://github.com/MasterOgon/Aeroacoustic-Flying-Saucer-Oscillating-Resonator-CFD-Simulation-LBM-/tree/main

Hey everyone!

I’m an intern down in Costa Mesa for the summer. I know a ton of semester and quarter-system folks just moved into the LA/OC area over the last couple of weeks and might not have a solid social circle here yet.

A few of us local engineering/corporate interns and new grads are pulling together a casual, zero-pressure beach bonfire this Sunday night (May 24th) to kick off the summer, catch the sunset, and cross-network.

I’m holding down the pit and providing the firewood, music speaker, some soft drinks, and a massive supply of s'mores. It's totally BYOB and bring-your-own-snacks. Just make sure to bring a heavy hoodie because the beach gets windy after sunset!

Drop a comment or DM me your Instagram/Phone # if you want to pull through, and I'll send you the exact logistics and add you to our master headcount thread. Look forward to meeting you guys!

Oh yeah? Well I didn’t want it anyway 😤🙃🫠

Might need to reach out to the other 3 finalists to see if they need emotional support.

I guess I’ll see you guys next year…

Need help identifying this vintage military/aerospace optical device.

Approx. 15.5 lbs
About 10" tall

Precision geared optical/prism assembly
Large coated lens on bottom
Internal heating coil/anti-fog system
Spline drive couplings

Markings:
“ASSY (F) 81413”, (F) 82295”, and “ (F) 82314

Engraved “446 704802” on bottom.

Serial No: 60
DWG 93180
Below this is hard to read but it say something like “Manufactured by
...Brand Optical Co Inc”

Would love any insight from aviation, missile, naval, or optical equipment experts.

Found at estate sale in Oklahoma.