Engineering Students Present at National Aerospace Conference

Utah State University recently sent its largest cohort of graduate students to a national conference for aerospace research, development and technology.

Aerospace engineering students from the AeroLab presented 11 papers at the annual American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech Forum on a number of topics spanning the aerospace field.

“It takes a lot of work to write a good paper for these conferences,” Hunsaker said. “This is the largest group of students I’ve ever taken to this annual conference, and I’m very proud of the hard work these students put in. This type of student representation at a conference speaks to the quality aerospace program USU offers.”

Hunsaker is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and has been director of the AeroLab since his arrival at USU in 2016.

This year’s forum, held January in Washington, D.C., explored the world of aerospace and the resources available to combine science and engineering to make sci-fi a reality.

Hunsaker’s students presented the following papers:

Effects of Active Wing-Morphing on Aircraft Fuel Burn along Fuel-Optimal Trajectories by Jeffrey Taylor

Static Trim of a Bio-Inspired Rotating Empennage for a Fighter Aircraftby Christian Bolander

Implementation of MachLine: A Subsonic-Supersonic, Unstructured Panel Code by Cory Goates

Multi-Fidelity Comparison of Supersonic Wave Drag Prediction Methods Using Axisymmetric Bodies by Troy Abraham

Simplified Mass and Inertial Estimates for Aircraft with Components of Constant Densityby Benjamin Moulton

Linearized Rigid-Body Static and Dynamic Stability of an Aircraft with a Bio-Inspired Rotating Empennageby Austin Kohler

A Theoretical Trade-Off Between Wave Drag and Sonic Boom Loudness Due to Equivalent Area Changes on a Supersonic Bodyby Nolan Dixon

Multi-Fidelity Predictions for Control Allocation on the NASA Ikhana Research Aircraft to Minimize Dragby Justice Schoenfeld

Lifting-Line Predictions for Lift and Twist Distributions to Minimize Induced Drag in Ground Effectby Kyler Church

Evaluation of the MachLine Subsonic-Supersonic Panel Code With Experimental Results by Ammon Houser

An Alternate Dimensionless Form of the Linearized Rigid-Body Aircraft Equations of Motion with Emphasis on Dynamic Parametersby Dr. Doug Hunsaker

More than 5,800 people attended the forum. Nearly 3,000 technical programs were delivered, making it the largest conference of its kind.

Awards will be given later this year for best paper presentations. More information about Hunsaker and his research programs can be found at the Aerolab website.