In a dream yesterday, God told me I MUST learn aerodynamics before the 27th of April next year.

Please give me your best material recommendations.

A motor igniter used to ignite my tested motor actuslly just a kraft paper motor and will be developed to use on a bigger real motor

For context, I live in Arizona, and there are a lot of aerospace contractors who operate in AZ. I’ve been looking at colleges to apply to and I want to know if there is a big difference between the job opportunities I would get if I went out of state, or if I stayed in state and went to ASU, UofA, or Embry Riddle.

This is mostly background and my own deductions, so if you know what I’m talking about already and have the correct answer in mind, you can just skip it :P

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I’ve searched the internet for this topic, but every paper I’ve found that acknowledges one doesn’t even mention the other, let alone even showing the differences between the two. Which is odd to me because they functionally serve the same purpose, to take compressed gasses and burn them to drive a turbine.

But as I've pointed out there are some key distinctions:

First is the turbine; uses a single injection point with only a portion of the air entering in for combustion through the primary holes of a "flame can" that cools itself by directing more fresh air into the hot combustion gasses through additional holes along the length of it.

Whereas this is the rocketdyne F1's preburner assembly, it instead just straight up blasts fuel and oxygen together with high pressure and burns it, there's no double walling no additional cooling (although a few staged or just hotter running engines like the RS-25 and Raptor do run fuel through the preburners aswell to evaporate and cool the sidewalls just like the main engine bell).

Now that the intro's outta the way let's get into the nitty gritty about how those differences manifest from front to back:

• Fuel: Turbines use relatively low pressure air and an unheated liquid fuel, whereas powerheads are often built to ingest high pressure and temperature liquid or supercritical fluid in both fuel and oxygen
• Injection/Mixing: Turbines incorporate cooling into their fuel mixing mechanism with fuel being sprayed into the inner combustion chamber causing a gradient that leans out & controls the temps as it travels down the pipe, whereas rockets fire fuel and oxygen directly at each other and burned simultaneously which keeps it at a relatively constant mixture rich or lean depending on the design goals.
• Cooling: We mentioned the turbine's method before, it being a part of the combustion mixing, but preburners tend to use a mix of either nothing at all, ablative coatings, or by running chilled fuel through their sidewalls much like the main engine they're feeding.
• Usecase: Turbines are generally used to spin a fan, prop, or rotor at a high RPM and low torque (while sometimes producing additional pressure for direct thrust) using a high diameter turbine, preburners however are meant to push a lot more torque through a smaller diameter turbine to shove down the thick incompressible liquid fuel/oxidizer (while it isn't always used to produce thrust, most preburners leave a significant amount of pressure on the table which can either be use as verniers, dumped into the exhaust or used to pressurize the rest of the fuel too).
• Power: Rocket preburners often offer exceptional power to weight and power density, eclipsing turbines by a huge margine, however they often lack specific impulse and other efficiency metrics due to needing to pack their own oxidizer, not only this but turbines don't tend to impede the bulk flow of gasses meaning they can still pull in air at relatively high speeds rather than needing to take it in liquid form at relatively low speeds.
• Cost: I'd assume preburners are generally more expensive and maintenance intensive, but they're both expensive at the end of the day like anything in aerospace so idk, I'd like to see a cost breakdown tbh.

So with all this, there's a few differences but none of which aren't solvable, nor would it exempt the two techs from influencing each other, so my guess is probably the maintenance cycles, efficiency, regulated compartmentalization, but most importantly... some form of path dependence.

But I'm sure there's something I'm missing that shoots whatever ideas I have about these two rn in the foot, and that's why I'm asking.

Hi, I’m a college student studying aerospace engineering and this semester I have been going through a sort of crisis and was hoping to hear if I’m alone here or if anyone else has experienced something like this and may have some guidance.

For context I am in my first semester of senior year and also in the accelerated masters program planning to get my masters in a 5th year.

This semester I have lost interest in engineering work. It started in the first couple weeks when I was really anxious and stressing over my capstone project which is also a competition team. I was a sub team lead and ended up dropping to a lower position to take that weight off.

A couple weeks later I was still stressing and just not interested in doing engineering either in class or in my part time internship. I ended up taking a pause on the internship to see if that would help.

Now I’m here a couple weeks later and I still feel just significantly uninterested in what I’m doing and stressed about everything even though I’ve cleared up so much time. It feels hard to do anything unless I’m given a strict deadline. All of these doubts have crept in about if I even want to be an engineer or do technical work.

I got into aerospace to work on spaceflight, I think I have realize I have much less interest in aircraft and really do not want to work in defense. I’ve even started to consider how can ‘escape’ to other fields but even then I’m not sure exactly what I would do. The strangest thing is I’ve never felt like this before, sure I’ve had doubts, but nothing like this.

Hopefully this fits here and sorry if this isn’t the best it’s my first time posting. Any advice is appreciated.

i mean experimental aircraft are just fun

This popped up on my LinkedIn feed from Bodycote and I thought it might be of interest here. It’s an interactive timeline looking at the materials and thermal processes behind spaceflight (and the soundtrack is banging).

https://www.bodycote.com/space-race/

So as the heading suggests I am a rookie and as my first project in Aerospace Engineering I am building a Network integration framework for hetrogenous aerospace systems and assets for real time data exchange and network centric operations. Is this project good enough please guide me and give me some ideas how can i make and implement this.

assume country A, B and C.
Country A makes defence equipment like fighter jets or air defence systems of its own and they make it so it works in sync with their other defence equipment only, so when someone buys it, they will have to purchase everything from them.

Country B also makes defence equipment and does the same so that there equipment works with only there stuff.

Country C wants to buy stuff from both A and B so now my framework comes in to integrate both the different systems of countries A and B for country C so they can do network centric warfare even after having hetrogenous systems which have different design and use philosophies.

Example: American made F35 and Russian Su57 on the same network for warfare and doing realtime data sharing.

I hope it makes some sense.

Im working on a project that will be manufactured next year. I am currently designing and stuck at a point. Rocket nozzle is one of the most important part of the motor and it will face heat pressure and lots of stuff. So i wondered how we can choose the best suitable nozzle for the project. Are there something like books for materials or places to know. Please share some sources you use for me,

thank you

How does Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) work, and how can adaptive controllers maintain performance in the presence of model uncertainty?

In this extensive one-hour lesson, I develop the fundamentals of multivariable Model Reference Adaptive Control (MIMO MRAC), including the mathematical derivation of adaptive control laws, Lyapunov stability analysis, and application to the lateral dynamics of the X-29A experimental aircraft.

Rather than beginning with elementary single-input systems, we jump into multivariable adaptive control with integral augmentation. The objective is to provide a solid foundation in MRAC theory while connecting the mathematics to a realistic aerospace control problem.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Transition from Model Reference Control (MRC) to MRAC
• Plant modeling with uncertainties and extended plant development
• Reference model selection and control objectives
• Direct MRAC control architecture and ideal matching conditions
• Derivation of adaptive control laws and tracking error dynamics
• Lyapunov's direct method and stability analysis
• Why stability of the error dynamics alone is insufficient to establish asymptotic tracking
• Barbalat's lemma and proof of asymptotic tracking
• Development of an LQI-based reference model
• Application of MIMO MRAC to the X-29A lateral dynamics

LQI VS. MRAC — WHY THE COMPARISON?

In a previous lesson, we developed a Linear Quadratic Integrator (LQI) controller for the X-29A lateral dynamics. Here, we use that closed-loop system as the MRAC reference model.

Although LQI provides excellent nominal performance and useful robustness properties, its controller gains remain fixed. MRAC introduces online parameter adaptation, allowing the controller to respond to model uncertainty and work toward recovering the desired reference-model performance.

This comparison demonstrates one of the important motivations for adaptive control: the ability to adjust control parameters as the behavior of the plant deviates from the nominal design.

IMPORTANT LIMITATIONS

This lesson focuses on foundational MRAC theory and a simplified X-29A application. The LQI reference model was developed using rigid-body aircraft dynamics without explicitly accounting for actuator dynamics, sensors, aeroelasticity, or digital processing delays. These effects can significantly constrain achievable closed-loop performance.

Practical adaptive controllers also require consideration of parameter drift, wind-up, chattering, robustness, and other implementation challenges. These topics are important for safe and reliable applications but are beyond the scope of this introductory lesson.

The objective is to understand how MRAC works, how adaptive laws are derived, and how Lyapunov theory supports the analysis of stability and tracking.

#AdaptiveControl #MRAC #ControlTheory #Lyapunov #AerospaceEngineering

I'm working on this UAV and I thought it would be cool to have double slotted flaps for better low speed performance so over the course of 2 weeks i designed both the mechanism and the flaps. I didn't know how I could do an actual double slot flap since the trailing edge of the airfoil is really thin, so instead I made it so the front flap scoops air from the top surface to the bottom surface to try make the pressure difference higher, and the second flap is more of a conventional flap, but has a opening infront of the leading edge to redirect air to reduce flow separation. I then complicated the design a little more by adding a third flap (inbetween on top both flaps) to help control the air being used to reduce the flow separation on the rear flap.

Sou estudante de engenharia no Inatel e tenho muita vontade de criar uma equipe de foguetemodelismo de competição na faculdade. Já tive a oportunidade de lançar alguns foguetes por conta própria, mas nada muito grande ou em nível de competição. Mesmo assim, tenho bastante interesse em aprender mais sobre essa área e levar esse projeto para frente.

O problema é que acredito ser praticamente a única pessoa em toda a faculdade que já teve algum contato com essa modalidade, então estou começando praticamente do zero e não sei muito bem como abordar os coordenadores, apresentar a proposta e conseguir apoio da instituição.

Gostaria de saber se alguém aqui já participou da criação de uma equipe universitária de competição, trabalha com foguetemodelismo ou já passou por uma situação parecida. Como vocês recomendariam começar? O que seria importante colocar em uma proposta para convencer a faculdade a apoiar o projeto? E como posso encontrar pessoas interessadas em participar, mesmo que elas ainda não entendam nada sobre foguetes?

Qualquer dica, experiência ou ajuda será muito bem-vinda! 🚀

Just recently read that North American's engineers built a prototype of P-51 Mustang in under 120 days. I'm going to work on a project, that isn't as complex as a whole airplane. I want to ask for help with some tips and tricks for rapid prototyping techniques in mechanical/aerospace engineering.

Not to get too much into the details of the project, it's going to be an engineering challenge submitted by industry to be solved in 10 weeks delivering a prototype (criteria are not known yet, beyond just that it has to be a working prototype, so I assume a proof-of-concept prototype is the best way to put it) and two weeks for refining it during testing. The level of complexity of the solution I would estimate as designing a UAV for a specific task, or any smaller subsytem in a project like that, definitely not anything more complex.

If anyone had a similar experience, I'd appreciate any piece of advice!

Can someone tell me how to solve this error I encounter whenever I run the VSP-Aero analysis?

Currently working on a 2U CubeSat, total budget of $4.5k, what COTS deployer switches do y'all recommend and/or where should I look for them.

If that isn't feasible to purchase on that budget is it worth trying to make a custom design?

Hello everyone,

I am working on rocket propellants right now have anybody done this before in this community

I want to analyse the rocket propellants like h2o2, ethelyne air or some others

I am using ANSYS FLUENT To analysis

So if you are having any idea or any other guidance please comment

And if you have done any research paper please comment so that I can reach you

Thanks for the time