Projects

January 2024 - May 2024

• Applied Systems of Systems (SoS) Engineering to Lockheed Martin's existing plan for the development of the lunar power grid to ensure scalability beyond the initial 20-year timeline

• Simulated lunar power grid supply and demand using System Dynamics (SD) modeling via Vensim

• Created a 'scalability factor' that existed on a 0-100 scale and grew with increasing power surplus and decreasing cost per KWh, providing insight into the scalability of the grid 

• Conducted Verification and Validation (V&V) on model by recreating Lockheed Martin's baseline and performing extrema testing

• Performed sensitivity analysis to determine the effect of budget, nuclear policy, and power grid standardization on power surplus, scalability, and downtime

• With two teammates, reported findings that suggested cross-industry standardization coupled with favorable nuclear policy would ensure a robust and scalable power grid that would be inelastic to additional funding

October 2023 - December 2023

• Utilized GasTurb14 to conduct throughflow analysis of 3-spool high-bypass turbofan reference engine (RR Trent XWB) and of a novel geared turbofan (GTF)

• With a group of four members, created a novel GTF design to improve upon baseline performance to achieve target values of thrust, thrust specific fuel consumption, bypass ratio, and pressure ratio

• Lead low/inter-pressure compressor design, implementing active boundary layer control to reduce stage number while maintaining target pressure ratio

• Wrote code to calculate Mach number across simulated flight profile to be used in range calculation and off-design analysis

January 2023 - May 2023

• Designed a Pre-Phase A overview of a 7-year mission crewed mission to Mars with 4-crew surface stay involving 3 novel technologies (TRL 5+) and 5 science objectives

• Referenced NASA's Design Reference Architecture 5.0 to generate a baseline to perform a Pareto analysis using a morphological matrix

• Researched and spearheaded deploying solar Montgolfiere balloons to satisfy both a novel technology objective and science objective

• Took over as project manager when previous manager stepped down, implementing ClickUp to hold all members accountable for specific tasks and return the project to the proper timeline

• Organized meetings, recorded meeting notes, tracked team member hours, and acted as a liasion between sub teams

• Presented our mission to a panel of professors and industry members, fielding questions to justify our design choices and clarify our material

Spring 2023

• Networked with vibration sensor engineers to educate myself on accelerometers for a redesign of the PVIPER sensor due to aliasing issues

• Balanced frequency requirements with cost requirements for the PVIPER sensor through rigorous research to find a replaceable sensor with a 6kHz sampling rate

• Took on additional platform to create an integrated sensor package that records temperature, pressure, position, and vibrations that is under 2U in size

Fall 2022

• Compiled poorly documented and convoluted previous reports to gauge current standing of project

• Evaluated performance of current sensor packages through testing via data collection and subsequent analysis in MATLAB

• Connected with computer engineers to properly recode and rewire the existing, nonfunctional PREFER sensor package

• Created a final report clearly documenting the history of the project to demystify its alterations, thoroughly explaining the changes made to the project, and delineating the steps to meet a late spring/ early summer 2023 launch

• 3 person project to determine accuracy of Ansys Fluent for a flow relevant to the propulsion community. The NASA 1507 Inlet was chosen for its simple geometry and widely available wind-tunnel data

• Generated 2D geometry of inlet from provided 3D CAD file and coordinate data

• Created a coarse and medium mesh that satisfied orthogonality and aspect ratio requirements

• Established strategy for gathering valid results despite vortices at boundary which prevented convergence

• Properly simulated shock structure, boundary layer development and SWBLIs, as well as terminal shock placement given engine face back pressures

• Performed an analysis on the accuracy of the results by comparison to wind-tunnel data

• Performed a grid resolution study, comparing relevant flow quantities between each grid.

• Logged more than 70 hours in Ansys, wrote 6800-word, 30-page report on findings, and gave 15 minute presentation

• Utilized Linux clusters to compute 80000+ iteration simulations.

With Prof. Macheret:

• Utilized a Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) software, SPARTA, to simulate rarefied, hypersonic, reentry flow

• Performed front-end writing and initialization through a Linux terminal and conducted simulations through cluster computing

• Processed and Analyzed up to 10 GB of text data in MATLAB to track per-species macroscopic quantities to present to overseeing professor

• Generated velocity distributions by species in MATLAB

*Research was interrupted by an abrupt change in advisor, and the goal was changed:

With Prof. Poggie:

• Attempted to update simulation to implement Macheret-Fridman equations in physical models in order to better inspect the dissociation of oxygen near the bow shock and its relation to temperature (ultimately fell short due to advisor change).

• Pivoted project to rescue meaningful results, taking on an additional objective to deliver a tutorial on SPARTA for future reference by Prof. Poggie's research group

A presentation on this research, as well as the tutorial I made, can be found in the Additional Documents section

• Researched existing solutions that utilize HEP to find an approach to model our analysis on (decided on the E-Fan X)

• Expanded on findings from teammates to show that satisfying propeller tangency while maintaining a fully HE system was impossible

• Compiled a report and gave a presentation concluding that a fully HEP regional commercial aircraft is not yet feasible with the current battery technology

• Recognized as a top-three project in the class as awarded by peer reviews and the review of our professor

• Competed with other university teams to locate a launched payload with one anchored position and without the use of GPS

• Compared and weighed various solutions, such as using a drone to locate the payload, employing dead-reckoning with an IMU within the payload, or using radiolocation

• Evaluated the researched methods through group discussion, peer reviews, and design iteration

• Developed a radiolocation system to locate the payload by communicating distances and angles between the ground station and payload through an array of transceivers

• Presented written proposals to both peers and NASA, following rigorous technical guidelines and formatting 

• Performed the design process with 5 teammates for a redesign of NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) due to concerns of cold soak

• Developed MATLAB programs and functions to solve for sizing parameters such as delta V, initial weight, and number of stages

• Researched propellants, oxidizers, and existing rocket engines and reconciled the findings with stakeholder and mission requirements to determine the optimal match

• Presented findings and created a final report explaining our research, process, designs, calculations, and solution