Thursday 03/02/2017:
I went to ASU on Thursday to help Luca Alfarano prepare nylon samples he would be testing on Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately, since ASU is on Spring break next week, I will not be able to provide "hands-on" help in the lab and will just be an observer to the experiments.
Dr. Mobasher provided me with several links as a means to become more familiar with the entire project as a whole. The nylon testing that Dr. Mobasher and his team are preforming at ASU is only a portion of the actual NASA LDSD project. LDSD stands for "Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator" and is currently being worked on by scientists and engineers at NASA and JPL.
I will provide the links at the end of this blog post for anyone that is interested in watching the videos.
Friday 03/03/2017:
On Friday I helped Luca prepare more samples of nylon for testing he would be doing later in the day.
The entire process of preparing the samples is incredibly repetitive and meticulous.
Preparing the Nylon Samples:
The first step in the sample preparation is to cut the aluminium sheet into rows with a width of 1.6"
Next, cut the rows into sections that are 2.1" in length. (each section will be used as a grip for the nylon same and each nylon sample uses 4 grips)
Once the aluminium sections are cut, the gage length must be marked on the sample of nylon for proper placement of the aluminium grips. The gage length is the part of the nylon which will be tested.
Next, apply super glue to one side of an aluminium grip and place on the nylon. Two grips will be placed on the bottom of the nylon sample and two will be placed on top of the nylon sample, one directly onto each of bottom grips.
Before testing the sample, paint must be applied in a very tedious process in order for DIC to properly detect deformation in the sample during testing.
ASU is on Spring break next week so my hours will partly spent in the lab and partly spent at BASIS Phoenix. However, I plan to continue my independent reading of my Mechanics of Materials textbook as well as readings for my project.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Thanks for reading,
-Nick Thompson
I had no idea that Dr. Mobasher's nylon testing is being used on the NASA LDSD project. It's pretty cool to see that you have some contribution in this huge project. This is a big deal as the LDSD is a reentry vehicle designed to test techniques for atmospheric entry on Mars. If you think about it you are helping NASA on one of their biggest missions which is just amazing.
ReplyDeleteHey Nick, you seem to be learning a lot of physics! So that most of it doesn't go over my head, what is the "Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator" and why do they need to do nylon testing for it?
ReplyDeleteHey Anila,
Deletethe "Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator" or "LDSD" for short is an ongoing NASA project which is in response to NASA's ambitions to continue the Mars rover missions as well as put humans on the Red planet. As I am sure you understand, objects that will be entering the martian atmosphere, or lack of one I should say, will be traveling extremely fast. As the payloads NASA sends to Mars become increasingly larger, new methods of slowing down the objects must be developed to insure a safe landing on the martian surface. In previous missions, NASA has used parachutes and airbags to deliver rovers, but I think its pretty obvious that having a human payload contained within airbags and having it bounce on the surface until finally coming to a stop would not be the safest way land. As for the actual LDSD you can check out this pretty easy to read NASA article, I think they do a pretty good job at explaining everything.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/ldsd/overview.html
At ASU, we are testing nylon because nylon is the material that composes the parachutes being used by NASA. The nylon is being tested to test the limits of the material so we can predict what conditions it can withstand. Ultimately, knowing what speeds the nylon parachute is effective and can be deployed can be the difference between a successful mission and a failed one.
Hope this helps :)