Students present senior design
research at AIAA conference
lthough
the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Aerodynamic
Decelerator Systems Technology Conference and Balloons Systems Conference
provided a forum for world leaders in the field to discuss its future,
the setting transported attendees some-200 years into the past. “The
conference was held in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, so just getting
to the conference hotel let us see the various reenactments that were
going on,” says Trevor Nesbitt.
Now in his final semester as an engineering mechanics master’s
student, Nesbitt traveled to Virginia May 21 through 24, 2007, to co-present
a paper at the conference.
The paper, “Buoyant Venus descender: Design of an atmospheric
probe for the scientific study of Venus,” was an offshoot of Nesbitt’s
spring 2006 senior design project with then-fellow students Emily Prewett,
Angie Franzke, Christy Modl and Ben Regnor. “Our project was a
probe to Venus that would be able to stay aloft via ballooning technology
in the atmosphere of Venus in order to collect data,” says Nesbitt.
“The paper went into the motivations, conditions on Venus at the
atmospheric layer of interest, and described in detail our design for
the probe.”
For their class, the students designed only the components necessary
to see the probe from atmospheric entry through balloon deployment and
steady-state operation.
Prewett also attended the
conference and she and Nesbitt delivered the paper together. He calls
presenting the paper a great experience. “Everyone there was very
receptive to student participation and were very understanding of the
limitations we were under for the design process—time, manpower,
etc.—and seemed fairly impressed with what we were able to accomplish,”
he says.
Their course instructor,
Adjunct Professor Frederick
Elder, also is pleased the students were invited to participate.
“It means our senior design class helps people both in the world
of product/hands-on engineering and in the world of research,”
he says.
Throughout the conference, Nesbitt attended talks on ballooning missions
to Mars and Titan, and on new types of analyses for balloon films. “I
was able to get a good sense of how much time and effort is involved
when dealing with balloon missions,” he says. “And even
though ballooning seems like an old technology, we still don’t
have all of the kinks worked out yet.”
Nesbitt, who is conducting research for his master’s degree under
Associate Professor Riccardo
Bonazza, says his trip to the conference also was a valuable networking
experience. “I enjoyed meeting all of the various aerospace professionals
at the conference,” he says. “All of them were really nice
and supportive. Everyone was really enthusiastic to have students involved
in the process.”
