Prashanth Bangalore Venkatesh

In the past several years nitrous oxide has been more widely considered as a “safe", clean oxidizer for rocket propulsion systems. Therefore, the present work investigated the use of nitrous oxide and ethylene as a bi-propellant mixture at elevated pressures. Earlier work with this bi-propellant mixture suggested that a steady detonation can be established in a combustion tube of larger L/d ratio and the associated flame acceleration prior to DDT could be studied more accurately. In order to use this bi-propellant mixture in a pulsed detonation engine quick flame acceleration is essential and this leads to a transition to detonation in a short duration of time. To study the flame acceleration and DDT behavior, tests were carried out in a combustion tube with L/d = 68 and detonation pressures were recorded using high-frequency transducers. The detonation velocities were determined based on the time instances of measured pressure peaks and the distances between the transducers. Additionally, the pre-compression observed in the combustible mixture before transitioning to a detonation was also studied. Finally, the run-up distances from these tests were determined and compared with values for different fuel-oxidizer mixtures from literature and those obtained with oxygen as the oxidizer.

Raj Deshmukh

Following recent advances in networked communication technologies, sensor networks have been employed in a broad range of applications at a lower cost than centrally supervised systems. Their major functionality is to track and monitor targets using various distributed estimation techniques. Specifically, the distributed Kalman Consensus Filter (KCF) fuses data from different sensor agents by achieving two objectives for each sensor: 1) locally estimating the state of the target; and 2) reaching a consensus of the state estimate between neighboring agents through communication. Although the KCF has been proven to have superior performance in terms of stability and scalability, it relies on approximated suboptimal consensus gain to avoid algorithmic complexity. Specifically, we seek to address this problem of suboptimality, and analytically derive the closed form solution to the globally optimal consensus gain, which is characterized by the minimum mean square error for the estimation process. Optimality grants a substantial boost in accuracy to the estimation process, thereby making it invaluable in performance-critical problems.

What is the Research Symposium Series?

The Research Symposium Series is a department-sponsored forum for graduate students and advanced-level undergraduates to present their research to a general audience.

The Research Symposium Series is designed to: 

• Facilitate the exchange of ideas and knowledge among faculty and graduate students.
• Provide opportunities for students to develop their technical presentation skills.
• Promote the research activities of the department to undergraduates and other interested individuals.

2017 Prizes

• $500, $300, $200 for best three presentations
• $150 for best undergraduate presentation
• $150 for best abstract

Questions about the Research Symposium Series may be directed to:
aaerss@ecn.purdue.edu
https://engineering.purdue.edu/AAE/Academics/StudentOrgs/aaerss
*Winners in the presentation category cannot compete in that category the following year. The same applies for winners in the abstract category.