This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)
The Aerospace Structures Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) is actively engaging undergraduates in meaningful research projects in the area of Membrane and Inflatable Structures. The laboratory was established in 1999 at James Madison University as part of the Infrared Development and Thermal Structures Laboratory and moved to VMI in 2007. Over the past ten years the laboratory has produced a dozen journal articles and conference proceedings authored or co-authored by undergraduate researchers. The thermal imager and videogrammetry equipment to be acquired under this award will support continued undergraduate research investigating the coupled thermal and structural response of membrane and inflatable structures. The relevance and complexity of the projects that can be undertaken in the laboratory will be enhanced with the purchase this equipment. Specifically, the videogrammetry system is well suited to obtaining dynamic shape data from hundreds of moving targets simultaneously. This allows for rapid data collection over large areas. Videogrammetry lacks the high sampling rates of laser vibrometers, but because membrane and inflatable structures are low-mass and lack stiffness, they have low fundamental frequencies. The acquisition of a thermal imager will add a non-contact temperature measurement capability that is not currently available in the laboratory. This capability is critical for obtaining temperatures from low-mass structures as traditional instruments such as thermocouples add mass and thermal capacitance that alters the thermal response of the structure. The videogrammetry and thermal imaging systems will allow simultaneous collection of shape, vibration, and temperature data.
The intellectual merit of this award is that it will lead to a better understanding of the thermal-structural interactions and dynamic response of membrane and inflatable structures, specifically deployable booms and membrane optics. It will allow the evaluation of the coupled, thermal-structural performance of membrane reflectors that may be used as orbiting antenna or optical systems. In addition, the requested equipment will foster a better understanding of the structural performance of deployable composite booms, allowing for the development of larger and more complex space-based systems.
The broader impact of this award is the practical experiences that will be gained by undergraduate students through the collaborations and research that it will support. Undergraduate students will participate in relevant and meaningful research on low mass, flexible structures. The instrumentation will allow the laboratory to be competitive in future proposals and externally funded projects. These projects will motivate undergraduate to continue their education and better prepare them for graduate studies. The projects undertaken with the requested instrumentation will provide the future engineers necessary to maintain the competitiveness of the U.S. Aerospace Industry.
