I acted as system engineer and led a group of 13 other engineer students in preliminary design of a crewed mission to Deimos, the moon of Mars.

Technical Work

I led the propellant tank and habitable volume structure design. I used NASA’s Isogrid Design Handbook to calculate isogrid geometries for weight saving primary habitat structures.

I developed a MATLAB code to iterate isogrid geometry and determine if the configuration is allowable based on launch loading. A MATLAB code print out is below.

Propellant Tanks

An aluminum lined LH2 COPV tank design was chosen for the main propellant tanks. Netting analysis was used to determine number of carbon fiber layers. FEA was not used due to project time constraints. The structure was found to be pressure critical, therefore not needed additional reinforcement for launch loading.

Preliminary Launch Vibrational Analysis

For the project, payloads would launch on an extended SLS vehicle stacked atop one another in a fairing. To approximate vibrational loading without detailed launch vehicle forcing functions, a multi-DOF spring oscillator arrangement was constructed to model payload natural frequencies. Payloads were treated at cylinders with known thicknesses and masses to determine stiffnesses.

Leadership Responsibilities

I guided the development of system requirements, created multiple iterations of Functional Block diagrams, led the team through concept selection, and created a project WBS and Gantt chart.

A top-level Functional Block Diagram.