MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. — 8 Sep 10
USRP Students Attend Ames Green Aviation Summit to Support the Cause
By: Heather L. Ogletree
Recently, wherever you go, “green” is the word to know. From fuel saving electric cars to your Starbuck’s cup, which is made from 10% recycled material, everyone has caught the little green bug, and they are trying to make the world a more environmentally friendly place. NASA’s Ames Research Center is no different.
During its Green Aviation Summit, held September 8, Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. addressed 200 experts from NASA, industry, and academia on the importance of green research. “Green is not just a buzzword to us,” Bolden said.
Undergraduate Student Research Project (USRP) interns Ashley Ross and Stephen Haviland were in attendance with their mentor William G. Warmbrodt. Ross and Haviland are working together on a USRP project entitled “Rotorcraft Aeromechanics Research.” The interns’ research projects include new vertical lift aircraft assessment and analysis (manned and unmanned), comprehensive analysis of current and new helicopter and tilt rotor aircraft, as well as CFD modeling of rotary wing systems and airfoil aerodynamics. This semester, Ross is supporting a real-time, pilot-in-the-loop experiment to study improved flight controls for a future Large Civil Tilt Rotor. The investigation is being conducted in the world’s largest vertical motion simulator, the Vertical Motion Simulator.
According to Bolden, “Tilt Rotor Aviation is going to revolutionize a lot of the things we do.”
The large civil tilt rotor is being designed to mitigate the environmental effects of the increasing demand for air travel and transport and the congestion on crowded airport runways. According to FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto, the U.S. air traffic system handles 35,000 to 37,000 flights a day, and at any time of the day, there are approximately 5,000 planes in the air over the United States.
“As the world travels even more,” said Ames Research Center director Dr. Simon “Pete” Worden, “we’re going to have a very serious global warming issue, as well as lots of other environmental impacts of aviation.”
Out of the twelve USRP interns participating in projects at Ames, four of them support “green” research. Ross and Haviland, are a part of tilt rotorcraft research, which in part aides to the overall reduction of pollution due to air traffic. Daniel Alexander II under the guidance of Greg Hornby is working on a project entitled “Formation Flight for the National Airspace,” which researches the impact of formation flying on fuel efficiency, and Omer Ayubi under the supervision of Scott Poll is working on a project entitled “Intelligent Systems for Sustainability,” which incorporates NASA innovations and technologies into a new “green” building presently being constructed at Ames called Sustainability Base. Poll notes, “The goal is to leverage research originally developed for NASA’s aeronautics and space missions to improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon footprint, and lower operating and maintenance expenses compared to traditional buildings.“
USRP projects will advance the Ames movement to reduce noise pollution, increase efficiency of air travel, decrease waste of fossil fuels, decrease our carbon footprint, and mitigate the effects of air travel on Global Warming.
Bolden said, “Just as I like to tell the scientists and engineers who send our human and robotic missions out into the cosmos, you are contributing to national goals and helping people in the work you do every day.”
Click here for more information about the Green Aviation Summit.
Contributing source:
Beth Dickey and Karen Jenvey; NASA Hosts Green Aviation Summit; Bolden Highlights Importance of Issue to Future of NASA; September 8, 2010
