Lauren RabainoTwo Cal Poly aerospace engineering professors have each been awarded million dollar contracts with NASA for design research related to future-generation aircraft.
David Marshall and Rob McDonald submitted separate winning proposals to NASA that, if received well by the agency, will be implemented into the design and engineering of commercial aircraft.
“NASA has had a transformation in their philosophy of how they want to do research,” McDonald said.
“They’re getting more and more ambitious and giving out larger awards.”
McDonald will work on developing optimization and design software, while Marshall’s project will develop prediction methods and test hardware for short-distance takeoff and landing airplanes.
Although their contracts are officially unrelated and separately funded, the two professors said the research has a symbiotic relationship.
“When the two proposals are put together, Professor Marshall’s is a compliment to mine, and mine a compliment to his,” McDonald said.
McDonald was awarded a three-year contract worth nearly $1 million to develop software that will facilitate the conceptual design of complex generation-after-next aircraft.
The term generation-after-next refers to aircraft technology two generations into the future.
“NASA is trying to scale up their projects to meet the growing need for air transport in the next ten to fifteen years,” McDonald said.
His optimization software framework will allow designers to test variable effects such as aerodynamics, structure and controls on the movements of the planes.
“We’re primarily looking at the way all the many disciplines interact to make the aircraft behave the way it does,” McDonald said.
The scope of McDonald’s project, along with the significant funding allocated by NASA, will allow him to spearhead a comprehensive team of experts and students.
“These are very big projects,” McDonald said. “Such that one person can’t possibly do all of it. It forces you to create teams.”
He will team up with Phoenix Integration, the aerospace industry leader in design exploration software, as well as renowned independent software developer J.R. Gloudemans, who already has a history of working with NASA.
McDonald will be looking for four Cal Poly aerospace engineering students to work with him.
“I’m looking for students who like to take initiative and work well on their own,” he said.
“Creativity is essential too. I want students who aren’t afraid to come up with crazy ideas.”
“One of the really attractive parts of this project is that it gets students at the undergraduate and graduate level involved in major research,” agreed Marshall, who will work with about 10 Cal Poly students on his team.
Several researchers, including Robert Englar of Georgia Tech Research Institute, will be heavily involved with the design portion of Marshall’s research, which will work to predict the performance of low-noise short-takeoff aircraft.
Marshall has been awarded a $870,000 budget for one year, with the possibility of an additional $3 million for another two years of research.
NASA funded the research in order to gain a better understanding of aerodynamic effects on an aircraft’s movement, propulsion and engine systems.
“We don’t understand the physics of it all that well yet,” Marshall said. “We’d like to build a better design mechanism.”
Both professors stressed the need for airplane designs that would help reduce air traffic in the increasingly crowded national airspace.
Currently, United States air traffic operates on what McDonald calls a “hub-and-spoke” system, where regional airports must serve as air travel centers for large areas, resulting in multiple layovers and inefficient routes.
“We need a point-to-point operation system that takes people exactly where they need to go,” McDonald said.
Right now the problem is in developing smaller, fuel-efficient aircraft that can handle increasing
traffic and use the existing airport infrastructure to increase direct flights from smaller airports.
Much of Marshall’s research will try to find ways to do that as well as minimize takeoff and landing noise.
“The San Luis Obispo airport can handle larger, 70-passenger airplanes,” he said.
“But a lot of people live by the airport, and they don’t want a loud, Boeing 747 beast landing down.”
“I’m not quite the visionary that Rob McDonald is,” Marshall said.
“I’m really more into the physics of the research. But we both understand the need to find new ways of thinking about aircraft design that will meet the growing needs of the commercial aircraft industry.”
“We’re excited to be able to work with NASA in meeting their goals,” McDonald said. “The aviation industry is ready for a renaissance.”