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featuring presentations by

Geoffrey Rairigh  and  Jagadeesh  Movva

Electric propulsion devices on spacecraft generate thrust by accelerating charged particles with electromagnetic fields. Such thrusters offer greatly improved efficiency over chemical rockets and potentially allow for larger payloads or reduced mission costs. At the High Power Electric Propulsion Laboratory (HPEPL), electric propulsion devices such as Hall Effect thrusters are tested and characterized using a variety of tools and techniques. This presentation covers some of the performance parameters and measurement devices used at HPEPL to characterize electric propulsion devices and provides an analysis of a Hall Effect thruster for comparison with other propulsion devices.

Helicopter slung loads are subject to unsteady aerodynamic forces, causing dynamic interactions in all 6 degrees of freedom, which if not accounted for can decrease the performance and safety envelope of the vehicle severely. For many of these applications, the dynamic problems with aerodynamic forces are not analyzed due to the complexity of solving through high fidelity CFD. In the Nonlinear Aeroelasticity Laboratory, Professor Smith and her group have created their solution, known as Georgia Tech Aerodynamics of Bluff Bodies. The GTABB code is a reduced order physics-based model for bluff bodies with and without tethers. The research goal for the work will be to implement a new model for bluff body tethers into GTABB. The current system of fixing the body to the reference frame will be replaced with on that that can accept more conditions regarding the dynamics of the tether cables. The solution being evaluated is to create a tether segments of the entire tether to more accurately measure the tether dynamics. This presentation will outline the methodology utilized and implementation into GTABB.