Date of Award

2022

Degree Type

Capstone Project

First Advisor

Dr. Bahram Nassersharif

Second Advisor

Michael Houts

Abstract

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration commissioned thirteen undergraduate mechanical engineering students from the University of Rhode Island to devise a system of mechanics to commence, maintain, and shutdown the rotation of a Centrifugal Fuel Element (CFE) in a Centrifugal Nuclear Thermal Rocket (CNTR). The rocket is the one of the latest projects of High Performance Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (HP-NTP) in public development, research, and experimentation by the United States of America, and is proposed to convoy a crewed mission to Mars and back in 420 days.

The elected thirteen students were allocated by the university into three teams: Team 19 (U92), Team 20 (Astronaught), and Team 21 (Team Rocket). Each team was further instructed with a more identifying project description. Two of the teams were advised to orient their goals more in alignment toward the aforementioned rotation of the CFE, while the third team had their task encompass the entirety of the CNTR. This third team: Team 21, composed of 4 students, was tasked with producing a full model of the CNTR.

The other two teams had their project definitions subdivided principally by the speed of rotation. Team 20, composed of 5 students, focused on the ”high-speed” rotation of the CFE (i.e., greater than 600RPM) and maintaining the CFE at 5000 RPM through a control system. Team 19, composed of 4 students, was administered the ”low-speed” division of the program (i.e., less than 600 RPM). As one can infer, these two teams had to work moderately in conjunction with one another in order to provide a smooth operation of the design in an actual application.

The three teams engineered a joint apparatus to prove the proposed design solutions for each of the teams’ respective goals. Specifically, Team 19 sought to provide testing data of a contactless method of rotation to the CFE through use of a motor, an optimized geometry of turbine blades within the CFE, and an invariable system of deceleration to the CFE. Many other secondary objectives for a theoretical full-scale utilization were incidentally and periodically excogitated over the duration of the two semesters, several of which will be noted in this report. However, given the magnitude of the project, these secondary objectives were not experimented upon using a physical model.

Comments

Team Name: Team 19, U92

Sponsor: NASA

Document Reference: URI-MCE-402-019-2022

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