University
of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science 4th
year aerospace students who are enrolled in an undergraduate
aircraft design class recently won first place in the national
NASA Revolutionary Vehicles Competition.
The students designed an unmanned aerial vehicle for flying
scientific missions on Mars. The aircraft uses a unique
blended wing/body and a rocket burning magnesium in the
carbon dioxide atmosphere on Mars.
The class leader, Steve Tangen, presented the design at
NASA's 2nd Annual Vehicle Systems Program Meeting in Columbus,
Ohio, to a technical audience consisting primarily of NASA
scientists and engineers. Tangen accepted the award of $5,000
from NASA. Professor Jim McDaniel, the team's faculty advisor,
said "U.Va. has entered this NASA aircraft design competition
for the past 12 years and has won one of the national awards
every year, in competition with universities ranked in the
top 10 in aerospace programs nationally. The aerospace engineering
students at U.Va. are extremely bright, with 40% of this
year's graduating class going on to graduate school at top
Universities."
McDaniel is a professor in the U.Va. School of Engineering
and Applied Science Department of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering. He holds a B.S. degree from the University
of Virginia, and M.S. degrees and a Ph.D. from Stanford.
McDaniel's research interests include fluid mechanics,
combustion, laser-based flow field measurements and aircraft
design. He is the Director of the Aerospace Research Laboratory,
where basic research in high-speed fuel/air mixing and combustion
is conducted using laser-induced fluorescence and other
non-intrusive optical measurement techniques. These techniques
are also being used to investigate the flow in a mechanical
heart pump.
