Aerospace Engineering Students Created an Excavator called "LUMINEX"!
Meet our Aerospace Engineering Capstone Group: Nima, Maria and Alyssa (Not imaged)
Walk us through your resin-filled inflatable material space excavator.
Originally we started off with exploring the idea of having an excavator for lunar projects, mainly for the Artemus missions that are going on, where they need to move large amounts of regolith on the moon. We started with the concept of a lunar excavator. What we realized throughout the project was that the loads were too great for any inflatable material to withstand, which was a necessary condition for our project. So we shifted our focus in our project to how do we make inflatable materials stronger? That's what ultimately our project ended up becoming. So what we ended up with was the model for an excavator, which we built, but mainly, the most crucial aspect of it, the most interesting part was the reinforced inflatables that we had going on. It just became more of a design solution for the issue of loading being too high for a lot of the applications. So our project became more of a solution than a particular product. We basically used the composite materials to line the inside of these inflatable beams that we had, and with this, we finally went back to our original idea of an excavator, and we realized after we applied these strengthening ideas and solutions to it, it was fully capable of withstanding the original loads, that it couldn't withstand in the beginning.
What was the inspiration behind this project?
The inspiration was mainly based on NASA's plan to get back to the moon, to use the moon as a testing ground to finally get to Mars. So to get back to the moon, NASA really wanted to explore the idea of using inflatable materials in space because you can compact them nice and neat in a spacecraft, take it up there, blow it up to however many times the size you need, and then have these giant structures on the moon that are actually still able to work just as well. So that was the main inspiration. Those were the guidelines that were given to us when we started this project/this course. For the specific idea that we came up with, the inspiration for that was that we wanted something cool. We wanted to have a breakthrough, well not a breakthrough, but something that we can be proud of when we finally finished this course.
We were given a list of options of things that we could design, and our team was pretty dead set on going outside of that list of options and doing something that would actually add to the field to some extent, like, find a solution to a problem that actually existed instead of all these fake problems that we make up in undergrad just to get practice, it felt like something real and almost important.
What are the current gaps in the field of inflatable materials? How does this project address those gaps?
The main thing I would say is the load bearing capabilities. Inflatables aren't used too much on Earth with many high loaded applications. For sure there are sure some, but it's not a lot like with metal machinery for there to be extensive research on. So that was also one of the challenges that we had, as there weren't too many sources where we could look up to see how someone else did, an inflatable in space for an excavator. We had to really go on our own for a lot of that. There weren't too many Earth [inflatables projects] for us to compare to, either. So we had to pull from inflatables, for example, that NASA did for their landers so when they wanted to come back to Earth, they would have these like giant parachutes, so that was one of the things that we could use.
Lack of research, existing research, and you find yourself relying on other people's research a lot. So to enter into something where you can't do that anymore, It was a little daunting, but it was nice to kind of have to start from the beginning and develop all of that ourselves. Nima had also said this previously, but just like giving strength to inflatable materials because you, you kind of need them in that field because they're such a perfect solution to the problem of having to ship large scale equipment. Those two things don't necessarily go together (strength and inflatable materials). So finding a way to bring those two things together is another field of research that has been dabbled on a little, but not enough that we could rely on existing research. We had to figure it out on our own for the most part.
What courses throughout your undergrad helped you prepare for this project?
There was the Introduction to Space Systems Design (AER 723). We had to make the solution for space. That course basically tells you how to make something that goes to space. What do you need to consider? How do you get together with a team? How do you start a project from start to finish related to space? What's the environment in space? Like, radiation, thermals, electricity, all of that.
There's a course called Mechanisms and Vibrations (AER 403). In that course, not all of it, but in I think the first half of the course, the big focus is on linkages. For example, if you have an arm like this that's just rotating, the math is pretty simple to figure out. But now you add another arm here. There's a motor controlling that arm separately. There's a lot of angles. There's a lot of forces on these two links that you have and how much you can actually control it. So that was a huge course that helped us with our excavator idea that had two linked arms.
There was also the Statics course that we took I think early on the second year, I believe, sometime there, where if something’s not moving and there’s load somewhere on a structure that you have, so for example, if you look at a telephone or something like that, if there are loads on it, is it going to be able to withstand these loads? And that ultimately ties back into the materials, so you figure out where the loads are, how they are acting, what directions they are acting, and then that tells you how much stress
What advice would you give to first-year engineering students?
I think probably one advice I would give is that if you're ever in a course and the prof's talking and it feels like it's all going through you and you're not really understanding anything, just ask. It saved me so much throughout the courses where I would kind of bug the professor. I would just make sure that I really got it because sometimes I wouldn't, and I found that to just be the most helpful thing.
I would say from my perspective, what I always tell myself is just don't be scared. It's so easy to say and it's so hard to do, but for some reason there's just a whole fear about raising your hand and asking questions and asking for help when you need it and setting up meetings with professors. Get the most out of your education and get the most out of these people that are trying to teach you, they want to see you try. Also, definitely, if you can handle it, join clubs. Joining clubs is super good for a resume. Super good for hands on stuff.
Congratulations on your graduation from TMU Engineering!
