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Forest Fire Fighting Twin Engine Aircraft

Senior Capstone Design Class

Life on Mars: Mission to Mars Rover

Spacecraft Design Team 2000-01: Back row, left to right: Tom Coy, Mike Travanty, Ryan Gosse, Brian Ulman, Phillip Boigenzahn, Kristin Grimlund, Ben Exley, Dan Jensen,Dakri Nelson, Mike Holtz, Terry Mulenberg, Alex Snyder, Chris Waino, Trung Dang. Front row, left to right: Cecilia Ortiz, Emily Grantski, Nick Velander, Kevin Hicok, Adam Timm

This year the spacecraft design students built a prototype of a rover to seek out life or water on Mars. The students’ objectives were to make the rover capable of reaching its destination under all conditions and maneuver around or over all obstacles. This meant that the rover had to be durable, reliable, maneuverable and controllable. Based on these criteria the students built the chassis of the rover out of 1.25 by 1.25 inch hollow steel pipes that can resist more than 200 lb force. The rover was driven by three rechargeable batteries connected to four motors, which were coupled to a computer that instructed the rover where to move. The rover was equipped with computer programmed sensors, and ran under the Z-World “Little Genius” CPU, that allowed it to maneuver around large obstacles. In addition, each motor was set up to work independently allowing the Rover to turn on its axis and go in reverse.

Students this year added a new dimension to their learning experience. A group of students mapped out a timeline of the mission components and scientific experiments to be fulfilled and made it into a video presentation to provide supporting documentation for the need for the mission. Fall semester students used ProEngineer to make models of the physical components of the mission. This modeling included the launch transport, landing vehicles and the rover. In the Spring, students took the ProEngineer generated geometry and imported it into a program called Maya. Maya is capable of taking complex geometry and animating it into object and subobject forms. This allows the creation of a three-dimensional world. At the end of the year, students went through all the typical mission phases from the conceptual effort, preliminary analysis, definition, design, and development which are typical design considerations in any mission.

Forest Fire Fighting Twin Engine Aircraft

Aircraft Design Team 2000-01: back row, left to right: John Heidt, Nathan Berg, Travis Schauer, Paul Hannah, Tim Swanson, Jeff Craemer, Chris Regan, Chris Teeuwen, Steve Botts, Travis Chezick, Greg Kline, Robert Forcier, Adam Basalay. Front row, left to right: Scott Martin, Eric Euteneuer, Travis Drayna, Cristina Wurst, Jeff Rollings, Ricardo Camel

Students got a first-hand lesson in the complexities of aircraft and the stringent design requirements that need to be followed. Critical issues are strength and weight. Students built an R/C model to simulate a full-scale aircraft. This R/C model lets students learn how changing or modifying one or more elements ultimately affects the performance of the aircraft. Students used ProEngineer to model their aircraft. They were then able to use Mastercam to mill the aircraft’s structure in the Department’s Shop using the ProEngineer models. Students made a number of visits to the Jensen airfield to test their model. Toni Riga from the Tri-Valley Flyers RC club volunteered again this year to help students pilot their radio controlled models.

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