Week 4

Plan for this week:

This week we finish putting together our poster.

We use the template attached in this webiste.

SESSION 4

 (October 4th, 2014, 9AM – 12PM in room 193, at Grand Canyon University)

Project: Matlab Computer Plot of Experimental Data Collection for the Trajectory Motion of Position and Velocity of a Modeled, Designed and Built Mechanical Flapping Bird

Principle Investigator: Michael Thompson

Department: Mechanical Engineering, Arizona State University

Phone: 602-373-9921

Email: mjthomp3@asu.edu

Web: https://sites.google.com/a/asu.edu/michael-thompson/home

NASA Space Grant: I believe I can fly! STEAM Program (Fall 2014 - Spring 2015)

Overview of Project

The main goal of this project was to have the youths plot/graph by using Matlab engineering computer software program to visualize the trajectory of how fast and how far their mechanical bird traveled. This is important for data analysis.

Problem Statement

Programming is essential to learn in today’s world and the problem is that not enough people understand or know how to program. This project will teach the students how to run a simple program to get their data fast and visually interpret how fast and how far their vehicle traveled. In order to conduct a thorough trade study the data has to be analyzed with a computer. This makes things much easier and convenience to easily change parameters and then see how that change impacts the vehicles performance. For example, if the students want to suddenly change how big their wings are on the vehicle then in turn will affect the velocity vs time curve they plot and will be able to visually see that change.

Approaches Taken  

Students completed a program code that can be seen below developed in Matlab:

Time=[0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8];Distance=[3 2 4 5 6 5 4 3 4]

plot(Time,Distance);axis([0 10 0 7])

xlabel('Time (seconds)');ylabel('Distance (feet)')

title('Mechnical Bird Flying');legend('Bird Flight')

grid minor

Major Developments, Accomplishments, and Conclusions

The students plotted their experimental data using code listed above to simulate how far and how fast their mechanical bird traveled. The students concluded from their plots the following:

(1) From data analysis, the students found in testing that the grand mean velocity was calculated as 0.67 m/s for the mechanical bird.

(2) From data analysis, the students showed that the experiments had a much slower velocity than anticipated and the mechanical bird’s performance design could not handle the applied payload capacity.

(3) From data analysis, the students found in testing that the their designed and built bird vehicles could travel a maximum of 2 meters from where they stood.

Directions for Future Research

Future work will exploit development of a 3D simulation in Matlab where the kids can visualize the vehicles performance. A 3D simulation would show a more realistic visualization of the mechanical bird flight performance.