Week 4

Introduction to Areospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Industrial Engineering

Aerospace engineering is a field of engineering that works with aircraft and spacecraft.  Products can range from jet wheel grips to plane switches, to plane engines, and solar spacecraft panels. Aerospace engineering has one of the highest median salaries in the engineering industry, at a hefty $122,000 dollars for annual salary.  Mechanical engineers are the people responsible for designing and overwatching the production of a certain product and are very diverse as they can work in virtually any industry, from medical to oil mining. Chemical engineers are the people responsible for developing various chemicals along with chemical scientists. They also help with patents and operate chemical plants. All of the food and commercial products in the hands of citizens have once gone through the hands of a chemical engineer. Industrial engineers are engineers that work for the government in order to serve the public. They design and oversee the building of bridges, government plants,  houses, and more. 

Design Process

1.  For the RockSim, we had to simulate a three-stage rocket taking a CO2 capturing device throughout the Earth's surface. We had to make sure that the rocket went along with the planned route when being fired, which was what took most of the time.

2.  The CO2 capture device is designed to use fans in order to suck air, like a vacuum, into the device, where it would be stored in tanks. When the tanks are full, the first motor would turn off, for which the second motor would start to filter out gases that were not relevant. The device would only activate if air quality were worse than some level.  The way we coded it was that 'if' air quality was worse than some level, it would start the motors. If it was not, then it would keep on looped the 'if' until air quality was worse. After being full, the servo motor would snap the tanks shut to prevent air leakage, for which second motor would exhaust irrelevant gases. 

3.  The one stage rocket took some time, but we shaped the front of it like a bullet, with a sharp tip and a parabolic underbody. The last thing that was made was the parachute. 

4. For the capacitor plane, we first bult the exterior, cutting up the parts out of foam according to instructions, and then wired in the motor. 

5. The drone was already prebuilt, so it only needed to be programmed. First, we tested the drone with the simplest takeoff code to ensure linkage between code and drone, and then coded the part where the drone had to go different heights to mearusere differnet CO2 levels. Then, we coded the part that need the drone to fly to a designated place, leave the CO2 detector, and come back. The problem with the drone was that it would always go haywire when it was below 50%. 

6. The straw rocket and stomp rocket were a pretty simple build which were powered through humans with the use of air compression. Not much design.

Tinkercad Mechanized system for caputuring CO2:

Glider, Stomp Rocket, Straw Rocket

Week 4 Design Process Paper: Week 4: design process - Google Docs 

Week 4 Stormwater to Greywater research paper: Week 4: Rainwater to Greywater - Google Docs