Carlota Bonnet
(Advisor: Prof. Marilyn J. Smith]

will defend a doctoral thesis entitled,

Physics and Modeling of Nonlinear Sharp-Edged Transverse Gust Encounters and Applications to Urban Environments

On

Tuesday, April 30 at 9 a.m.
Montgomery Knight 317
and virtual on Teams: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MDc1ZWI5ZTQtNDllMi00Mjg0LTk3NDgtYzI2YjE3YjU5ZGE3%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22482198bb-ae7b-4b25-8b7a-6d7f32faa083%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22af0448b1-ec41-4245-99ba-fb5b74e6bb1b%22%7d

Meeting ID: 298 435 175 267

Passcode: D8kWhy

Abstract
The advent of smaller, lighter Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAV) focus on missions that are performed primarily in urban and nap-of-the-earth environments. These vehicles, with slower forward flight speeds and reduced mass ratios flying through large transients, have led to a renewed interest of gusts (discrete turbulence) and their impact on vehicle response. This knowledge is required to ensure both safety and the reduction of noise during operations, in particular during takeoff and landing (terminal operations).

As such, a greater understanding of the flow physics of large canonical wing-gust interactions is required in order to accurately model these physics during vehicle design, especially for manned and autonomous control law development.  This understanding requires the development of physical and computational experiments that accurately capture the details of the flow field so that existing linear models can be expanded or new theories developed.

This defense will present the development of a computational methodology to model nonlinear sharp-edged transverse gusts and validate the results against experimental data. The methodology is then used to characterize the behavior of a lifting surface encountering transverse gusts of varying amplitudes and widths to isolate the fundamental physics which characterize the transition from traditional linear gust responses to nonlinear gust responses for traverse gusts with a top-hat profile. Lastly, the effect of vertical motion on the vehicle response is analyzed.

Committee

• Prof. Marilyn J. Smith – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Prof. Brian J. German – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Prof. Jonnalagadda V. R. Prasad– School of Aerospace Engineering
• Prof. Juergen Rauleder – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Dr. John Hrynuk – Research Mechanical Engineer, DEVCOM Army Research Lab
• Dr. Brett Peters – Senior Aerodynamics Engineer, REGENT Craft Inc.