NASA KANSAS SPACE GRANT CONSORTIUM
WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Dr. Walter J. Horn, WSU Director

Welcome to the home page of KSG                                 

The KANSAS SPACE GRANT CONSORTIUM (KSG) is made up of Emporia State University, Fort Hayes State University, Haskell Indian Nations University, Kansas State University, Kansas University, Pittsburgh State University, Wichita State University, and the Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center. The goal of the Consortium is the development of initiatives that support both national and state priorities that derive from NASA's vision, mission, and strategic enterprises.

The member institutions of the Kansas Space Grant Consortium (KSGC) include the following six Kansas Board of Regents universities: the University of Kansas (KU), Kansas State University (KSU), Wichita State University (WSU), Emporia State University (ESU), Pittsburg State University (PSU), and Fort Hays State University (FHSU). In addition, the Haskell Indian Nations University (HINU) and the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center (KCSC) are voting members of the consortium. In addition, the Kansas Association of Community College Trustees, the Exploration Place (Science Museum in Wichita, Kansas), and Ad Astra Kansas News (a science newsletter based in Kansas) are affiliates of the consortium.


Activities Supported at WSU as a part of the Kansas Space Grant Consortium:

 -Support research and education initiatives
 -Support graduate education and research through the funding of graduate research assistants
  and graduate teaching assistants
 -Establish undergraduate research experiences
 -Recruit candidates for the NASA Summer Academies
 -Support outreach programs
 -Support general public activities
 -Support student academic and professional organizations


KSGC funds were used during academic year 2004-2005 to support faculty, undergraduate students, and graduate students in the following research activities:

Experimental Investigation of the Dynamic Interactions among Longitudinal Vortex Filaments
Aircraft configured for landing, deploy partial span flaps that shed a strong pair of vortex filaments, in addition those emanating from the wing tips. On each side of the aircraft, the co-rotating filaments merge at some distance downstream to form a single strong vortex that poses the most danger to other aircraft. The time-dependent motion of these filaments arising from mutual- and self-induction effects prior to their merger has not received its due attention in the technical literature. The dynamics of this type of flow is examined experimentally in a water tunnel.

The following publications were produced from the results of this research effort:

• Rebours, R., Kliment, L. K., and Rokhsaz, K., “Forced Response of a Vortex Filament Pair Measured in a Water Tunnel,” AIAA Journal of Aircraft, Vol. 41, No. 5, Sept.-Oct. 2004, pp. 1163-1168.

• Rokhsaz, K., Kliment, L. K. and Miller, T. S., “Experimental Investigation of the Dynamic Interactions between Co-Rotating Wing/Flap Tip Vortices,” SAE 2004-01-3101, SAE World Aviation Congress, Reno, NV, November 2004.

• Kliment, L. K. and Rokhsaz, K., “Experimental Investigation of the Forced Response of a Pair of Co-Rotating Vortex Filaments,” AIAA-2004-2434, Proceedings of AIAA 34th Fluid Dynamics Conference, Portland, OR, June 2004.

Under Review:
• Miller, T. S., Kliment, L. K., and Rokhsaz, K., “Analytical Investigation of Co-Rotating Vortex Filaments with Experimental Verification,” Submitted to AIAA Journal of Aircraft.

• Kliment, L. K. and Rokhsaz, K., “Experimental Investigation of the Forced Response of a Pair of Co-Rotating Vortex Filaments,” AIAA-2004-2434, Proceedings of AIAA 34th Fluid Dynamics Conference, Portland, OR, June 2004.

Advanced Flight Control Systems Safety and Certification Aspects
An advanced flight control system that was developed for and has been demonstrated to compensate for unanticipated failures in military aircraft, is being investigated for use in general aviation. This method uses inverse control to decouple the flight controls and modify the handling qualities of the aircraft. The purpose of the system is to render a general aviation aircraft easier to fly by decoupling its flight control system and making the aircraft handling more natural to a non-pilot. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are used to counteract the modeling errors in the inverse controller, but more importantly, to adapt to unanticipated failures during flight, thus allowing the pilot to continue to safely control the aircraft. Since a decoupled flight control system is software-based, it is a fly-by-wire system. For such a system, it is difficult from a cost standpoint for general aviation to incorporate the level of redundancy required in such flight control systems; therefore, the demonstration of this system’s capability to handle control system failures is critical to future certification efforts. The system is being implemented in MATLAB simulations for longitudinal flight. Extending this to lateral-directional flight is in progress. In simulations, the control system is shown to be able to track pilot velocity and pitch angle, flight path angle, and bank angle commands. Simulations of changing configurations, payload and partial control system failures have shown that the controller does rapidly adapt to these changes without a need for a pilot response. A pilot in the loop flight simulator has verified the MATLAB simulations and work is ongoing to flight test the control system on the Raytheon (NASA SATS/AGATE funded) Bonanza F33C Fly-By-Wire Testbed.

The following publications were produced from the results of this research effort:

• J. E. Steck, Kamran Rokhsaz, U. J. Pesonen, Stuart Mochrie, Mike Maxfield, Pilot Evaluation of An Adaptive Contoroller On A General Aviation SATS Testbed Aircraft, AIAA guidance Navigation and Control Conference, Aug. 2004.

• U. J. Pesonen*, J. E. Steck, K. Rokhsaz, N. Duerksen, S. Bruner, Adaptive Neural Network Inverse Controller for General Aviation Safety, AIAA of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, vol. 27, no. 3, May – June 2004, pp. 434-443.

• (SAE Paper Offer #: 04GATC-23), An Advanced Flight Control System for General Aviation Application, SAE 2004 General Aviation Technology Conference & Exhibition (GATC); April 20 - 22; Century II Convention Center; Wichita, Kansas

Neural Network Control for Spin Recovery
Spinning aircraft are difficult to control when recovering from a spin. A scheme has been developed at WSU to compute the control sequence necessary for achieving such a recovery, using non-linear optimization to compute the control inputs every tenth of a second. This effort used the same approach, but employed an Artificial Neural Network to produce an inverse solution to the equations of motion. Their usage to find the control inputs to arrest the spin has so far been unsuccessful.

Setup of Extreme Temperature Testing Facility for Aircraft Attitude Reference System
Performance evaluation of attitude and heading reference systems (AHRS) requires testing of angular velocity at extreme operating temperatures (-40 to 70º C.) Redesign and construction of the low temperature chamber is complete. Attempts to control the rotary tables using the computer were interrupted by the untimely death of the recipient.

Numerical Simulation of Magnetohydrodynamic Flows
High speed flows over leading edge of hypersonic airfoil subject to an applied magnetic field is numerically simulated. The governing equations are composed of the Navier-Stokes equation modified to include the effect of magnetic field. In the current applications, the low magnetic Reynolds number approximation is utilized. A four-stage modified Runge-Kutta scheme augmented with the Davis-Yee symmetric Total Variation Diminishing model in post-processing stage is used to solve the magnetogasdynamics equations. The flow simulations are compared to existing solutions.

The following publications were produced from the results of this research effort:

• Ovais U. Khan, Klaus A. Hoffmann and Jean-Francois Dietiker, Numerical Investigation of Magnetogasdynamic High Speed Flows. (accepted for publication); Paper Number: AIAA-2005-1182

Structural Life Evaluation Methodology
This research is in its third year and is expected to continue for two to five more years. At the present time a significant volume of experimental data has been acquired. The overall objective of the project is to develop an analytical methodology that is based on the experimental data. This objective will be achieved in stages by starting with initial data that has already been collected and adding more data as the project progresses.
Recent research focused on developing and testing analytical models that support the experimental results

A Simplified Handheld Quantitative Flow Survey System (QFSS)
Wind tunnel testing commonly utilizes specialized and complex experimental apparatus for studying vehicle flow fields. A range of sophisticated instruments are available to make measurements, including for example Particle Imaging Velocimeters (PIV's) and Pressure Sensitive Paints (PSP's). Desired measurements include flow velocity (i.e., speed and 3-D direction), static and total pressures, and temperatures. The resulting experimental data is typically used to generate graphics showing flow properties as a function of position or to calculate other important information (e.g., vorticity, drag, etc.). Interestingly, many wind tunnel users have only very basic needs, typically revolving around getting enough information to solve a problem. As a result, PIV or PSP associated complexities and costs are not consistent with their requirements or budget. Given this perspective, a graduate student (MS) project was initiated over the summer to development a handheld Quantitative Flow Survey System (QFSS) for making basic flow velocity, pressure, temperature, and position measurements. Moderate reductions in accuracy and resolution, from PIV and PSP methods, are being knowingly traded for gains in apparatus simplicity and utility. A prototype QFSS instrument is currently in detailed design and will begin evaluations in early 2005. The new apparatus is expected to help investigators solve some problems with lower costs, greater ease and improved flexibility.

Generally all students were partially supported by the KSGC, partially by WSU matching support, and partially by other funded research projects. Space Grant funds were also used to partially support the travel of students to present papers at national conferences. Additional students will be supported during the Spring 2005 semester.


The following WSU research projects have been partially supported with undergraduate and graduate student support in recent years:

• Experimental Investigation of the Dynamic Interactions Among Longitudinal Vortex Filaments

• Analytical Investigation of the Mutually- And Self-Induced Motion of Longitudinal Vortex Filaments

• Advanced Flight Control Systems Safety And Certification Aspects

• Cascade Flow Simulation And Measurement for the Study Of Axial Compressor Loss Mechanism

• Development of a Dynamic Pitch And Unsteady Freestream Delta Wing Mount for a Water Tunnel

• Setup Of Extreme Temperature Testing Facility for Aircraft Attitude Reference System

• Neural Network Control for Spin Recovery

• Evaluation and Retrofit of Fail-Safety on KC-135 Fuselage Structure

• Numerical Modeling of Impact Damaged Sandwich Composites Subjected to Compression After Impact Loading

• Micromechanically Based Fracture Mechanics

• Design and Fabrication of 9-M Carbon Hybrid Wind Turbine Rotor Blades

• Performance Analysis of Two On-Demand Ad-Hoc Routing Protocols with Node Failure

• Class-Based Guaranteed Bandwidth Allocation in ISP Networks with Restoration Under Single Link Failure

• Human Factors and Ergonomics

• Flow and Noise Control

• Flight Control and Aeroelastic Optimization

• Hypersonic Aerodynamics

• Electric Propulsion

• Airframe Manufacturing Processes

• Supply Chain Management and Enterprise System

• Object-Oriented Programming for Scientific Applications

• Supply Chain Management and Enterprise System A.

• Kinetic Wave Particle Split Algorithm for MHD Equations

Higher Education
Funds were used during academic year 2004-2005 to support the following activities associated with higher education:

• Partial funding for Graduate Teaching Assistants

• Partial support of travel expenses of the WSU SAE AeroDesign Team’s entry in the Society of Automotive Engineering’s Heavylift Aircraft Design/Build/Fly international competition in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas.

• Support for supplies for the WSU Design, Build & Fly team that participated in the national competition sponsored by NASA and Cessna Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas and in Maryland in the April 21-25, 2004.

• Partial support of the travel expenses of the WSU AIAA Student Chapter's participation in the AIAA Regional Student Paper Competition in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Participation in National Programs
Wichita State has had a good record of participation over the recent years in the NASA Space Academy and hope to recruit qualified students for the summer of 2005 programs at the NASA centers.
Kansas Space Grant funds were used to partially support the participation of the following four WSU students in the NASA Space Academy:

 Melinda Schwasinger, 2001
 Andrea Vavra, 2000
 Shad Plante, 1997
 Joe Wilding, 1996

General Public
Grant funds were used to provide partial support to underwrite the broadcast of the Star Date radio program on several radio stations throughout the state. In addition, grant funds were used to partially fund a booth at the Experimental Aircraft Association Annual Convention at Oshkosh, WI.



 

 Wichita State University |Search| College of Engineering |