Announcements

NASA announces Internship website revision

September 20, 2017

NASA has unveiled a new splash page and is updating the system for their internship opportunities: www.intern.nasa.gov.

The spring 2018 session for internship opportunities will still use the old system: OSSI. (The URL is not changing.) Applications will be accepted until October 17, 2017.

The website link for summer 2018 internships will open and can be accessed beginning on October 17, 2017. After this date, all of the internship sessions will use the new system.

NASA continues to have unique internship opportunities for students to get involved with NASA-related research. Watch the deadlines, and get your applications in to be considered for these amazing opportunities!

4-H Youth View the Solar Eclipse

September 20, 2017

Wearing special glasses or using hand-made, cereal-box viewers, nearly 2,000 young Iowans participated in 4-H solar eclipse day camps across Iowa, including Boone, where ISU Extension and Outreach 4-H Youth Development teamed up with Sacred Heart School.

Contacts
Annette Brown, 4-H Youth Development Specialist, annbrown@iastate.edu, 515-432-3882
Natalie Hedlund, Boone County Youth Coordinator, natm@iastate.edu, 515-432-3882

Youth Across Iowa Experience 2017 Solar Eclipse through 4-H Camps

August 28, 2017

This article was published on Iowa State University’s Extension and Outreach website by Cayla Taylor and Bonnie Dalager. Click here to read the entire article.

AMES, Iowa – Iowa State University Extension and Outreach offered over 75 solar eclipse day camps across Iowa. The Iowa 4-H Youth Development program, county extension offices, and partner organizations came together to provide high quality science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education opportunities to youth for the 2017 solar eclipse.

On Aug. 21 nearly 2,000 young Iowans were able to experience a near-total solar eclipse at a local 4-H day camp, a rare opportunity to experience an interesting and scientifically significant event.

The youth participants took part in a wide variety of educational activities related to solar eclipses, such as learning how eclipses work and making pinhole viewers for safe eclipse viewing. Technology was also used to feature special speakers highlighting STEM career opportunities.

This program was made possible thanks to a partnership between the Iowa 4-H Youth Development program and the Iowa Space Grant Consortium.

“We are excited to have had the opportunity to offer this program state-wide. The participants were enthusiastic about these educational activities,” said Cayla Taylor, ISU Extension and Outreach 4-H educational opportunities manager. “This was a great opportunity to encourage young people in to explore the world around them, and get excited about potential future opportunities in STEM fields.”

To learn more about county 4-H, contact a county ISU Extension and Outreach office, or visit the 4-H website, www.extension.iastate.edu/4h. For information on 4-H aerospace projects and events, visit the project page at www.extension.iastate.edu/4h/projects/aerospace.

2017 NASA Academy of Aerospace Quality Workshop

August 22, 2017

The Iowa Space Grant Consortium is inviting all to participate in the 2017 NASA Academy of Aerospace Quality Workshop. This event will take place in Huntsville, AL on Friday, October 13 from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM.

The event targets academics (faculty, researchers, students) involved with space related activities such as cube sat, small sat, high altitude balloon, rocket and more. It is also designed for those wishing to be involved with NASA space related projects. The event will feature speakers and a poster session.

Travel stipends from NASA are available to attendees on a limited basis and will favor those giving a presentation or poster. There is no registration charge for attending the event but registration in advance is required.

Please register at the link below by September 15.

http://spider2.eng.auburn.edu/AAQ/registration.html

The NASA Academy of Aerospace Quality is an open access virtual academy of educational modules, lessons learned, standards, case studies and more related to quality assurance for space related projects, especially those from academic based teams. The website is:

http://aaq.auburn.edu

Links to the agenda and materials from previous NASA AAQ Workshops can be found at the link below:

http://aaq.eng.auburn.edu/drupal7/events

Christina Bloebaum named director of Iowa Space Grant Consortium

August 22, 2017

Dr. Christina Bloebaum, interim chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University, has been named director of the Iowa Space Grant Consortium, Vice President for Research Sarah M. Nusser announced Tuesday. Dr. Bloebaum, the Dennis and Rebecca Muilenburg Professor of aerospace engineering, replaces Dr. Rich Wlezien, who departs after one year as director.

Dr. Bloebaum has been at Iowa State for five years, conducting research in the design of large-scale complex engineered systems. Prior to joining Iowa State, she was the Program Director for the Engineering and Systems Design and Systems Science programs at the National Science Foundation from 2009-2012.

“I am excited to begin working with my colleagues at NASA and around Iowa to inspire STEM research and education throughout the state,” Dr. Bloebaum said. “Iowa’s universities and organizations are full of talented people and together, we can advance NASA’s mission and impact the future of aeronautics research and space exploration.”

Dr. Bloebaum is the 2012 recipient of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Award and a Fellow of the AIAA. During her time at Iowa State, she has served as Director of Graduate Educations as well as Associate Chair for Research.

The ISGC supports STEM research, education, and outreach activities for students and researchers throughout Iowa. The Iowa Space Grant Consortium also strives to inspire Iowa’s future scientists and engineers using NASA resources by funding internships, fellowships, and scholarships, as well as student and faculty research projects and travel to NASA Centers.

Iowa State professor looks to owl wings for bio-inspired ideas for quieter aircraft, wind turbines

August 17, 2017

Iowa State researchers, left to right, Bharat Agrawal, Andrew Bodling and Anupam Sharma are studying how owl wings can inspire ultraquiet aircraft and wind turbines. Larger photo. Photos by Christopher Gannon.

This article was originally published on news.iastate.edu by Mike Krapfl. Click here to read it in its entirety.

AMES, Iowa – Anupam Sharma pulled an accordion folder from the bookshelf above his Iowa State University desk. Inside was the carefully collected and preserved wing of a short-eared owl.

Here, he said, could be some clues for developing ultraquiet aircraft and wind turbines.

“The owl is almost completely silent in flight,” said Sharma, an Iowa State assistant professor of aerospace engineering and Walter W. Wilson Faculty Fellow who started working in aeroacoustics – the noise associated with air flow – during graduate school and a previous position at GE. “Owls are not only silent in gliding flight, but also in flapping flight, which is amazing.”

And then Sharma picked up the wing (a specimen collected by Iowa State avian ecologist Stephen Dinsmore) and pointed out the three-part “owl hush kit” that’s responsible for silent flight.

First, at the leading edge of the wing there are small, fine, comb-like structures. Second, all the feathers at the trailing edge of the wing end in a pliable and porous fringe. And third, there’s a downy coat on the flight feathers. (See Figure 1, below.)

To learn exactly how that hush kit manipulates air flow, turbulence and pressure to produce silent flight, Sharma is scanning owl wing specimens, creating digital models and running multi-day

These are 3-D printed models of aircraft propeller blades with serrated leading edges inspired by owl wings.

simulations that use more than 16,000 processers provided by one of the country’s top-ranked supercomputing facilities at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. He and his colleagues hope their studies will produce practical ideas for making ultraquiet aircraft and wind turbines.

There have been previous studies of owl wings and silent flight. The U.S. military has also looked at owl flight for ideas for stealth aircraft.

But, Sharma said few have taken a high-powered computational approach to the studies.

“We can get into details that there is no way you can study with experiments,” Sharma said.

Sharma reported some of his numerical investigations earlier this year in Denver during the Aeroacoustics Meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Sharma also described how the downy coat of owl wings inspired his collaborators at Virginia Tech to design model airfoils (the curved shape of an aircraft wing) with a regular series of small, thin “finlets” and canopies near the trailing edge of the blade and running parallel to the airflow. William Devenport, a Virginia Tech professor of aerospace and ocean engineering and director of the university’s Stability Wind Tunnel, led the experiments in Virginia.

Both research teams compared the performance of the owl-inspired airfoils to a standard, flat-surfaced airfoil.

Sharma said the computer simulations showed the owl-inspired airfoils substantially reduced the unsteady pressure on the back end of the blade surface. And, the researchers found that the sound radiated by the owl-inspired design was reduced by up to 5 decibels over a wide frequency range. This noise reduction was observed without sacrificing aerodynamic performance.

Sharma said the experiments performed by the Virginia Tech researchers agreed with the simulations. The researchers found the owl-inspired designs reduced noise and they also demonstrated that fence spacing on the airfoil is an important design parameter.

The National Science Foundation is supporting Sharma’s studies with a five-year, $500,000 CAREER grant, the foundation’s most prestigious award for early career faculty. The Iowa Space Grant Consortium has also supported the research with a $100,000 grant. And the National Science Foundation and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility are supporting computer time for the studies.

In addition to Sharma, the grants are supporting the research of three Iowa State students in aerospace engineering: Andrew Bodling and Bharat Agrawal, doctoral students; and Vishal Vijay, a master’s student.

A 2016 paper by Sharma’s team and published in the International Journal of Aeroacoustics notes that tests of airfoils with a serrated leading edge inspired by owl wings found the serrations substantially reduced airfoil noise. The paper also established the physical mechanisms that caused the noise reduction. (See Figure 2, below.)

All of the simulations, tests and data applying the owl’s hush kit to airfoils and wind turbine blades doesn’t mean next-generation aircraft or wind turbines will look like owl wings.

“Our approach is bio-inspired as opposed to bio-mimicry,” Sharma said. “Our designs won’t look like owl wings. We’re studying the physical mechanisms behind the owl’s silent flight. Then we’re taking simplified geometries inspired by the owl wings and applying those to aircraft wings, rotor blades of jet engines and wind turbines.”

Sharma has used 3-D printing to quickly develop models to test various ideas and geometries.

So far, the studies are telling him the owl has potential to help engineers develop ultraquiet flight and wind energy, although applications might start at smaller scales and low speeds, such as drones or unmanned aerial vehicles.

After that, Sharma wrote in a project summary, “The results of this research could have an impact on the design of silent air vehicles with application in national defense, in commerce and in transportation.”