As students everywhere return to school, the luckiest are heading for caves and rocket firing ranges instead of lecture halls
Posted 09.09.2009 at 11:08 am
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Wrench Jockeys: Undergrads tinker with a prototype laser ignition system on an industrial Caterpillar engine. John B. Carnett
So You Want to...Fix the World’s Biggest Engines?
Where: Engines and Energy Conversion Lab (EECL), Colorado State University
What You’ll Learn: How to make a 2,300hp engine run cleaner
Job Prospects: Mechanical engineer, chemical engineer
Typical Assignment: Design a laser-ignition system for a new typeof natural-gas generator
Take it from CSU postdoc Sachin Joshi, you haven’t really seen an engine until you’ve climbed inside one. At the EECL, students retrofit industrial engines that reach two stories in height. “Students at no other university in the world work on anything near the scale we have,” says lab director and founder Bryan Willson.
One of the largest is a two-stroke, 440-horsepower combustion engine, typically used to compress natural gas and push it through underground pipes. In the lab’s 17 years, the technologies it has developed for this type of engine alone (including a now-ubiquitous fuel-injection system) have reduced nitrogen oxide emissions by an amount equivalent to taking 120 million modern cars off the highway.
Joshi and his students are now working on a 17-ton Caterpillar natural-gas-powered generator that’s capable of providing electricity for up to 1,200 homes. Utilities want to hook up the 1.8-megawatt machines to the grid in the middle of cities (to save the energy otherwise lost in transit), so they need to run clean. Caterpillar donated one to EECL. The team has already created an ignition system in which a laser travels through fiber-optic cables to optical spark plugs. It burns fuel more efficiently than the stock ignition while emitting fewer nitrogen oxides.
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I love your desisn.
ALIEN NATION
Re: So You Want to...Fire Big Rockets?
Regulation of hobby rockets is NOT dependent on the altitude they fly to.
A model rocket weighs 1.5kg or less and is made of light weight material like balsa wood, paper, and plastic.
A model rocket motor contains 62.5g of propellant or less and a total impulse of 160 newton/seconds or less.
There is no maximum altitude or maximum speed except those imposed by the laws of physics. Super-sonic flights are possible and altitude records for F and G class rockets exceed 2 kilometers.
For the straigt scoop on model rocketry see the National Associatio of Rocketry web site at http://www.nar.org
Rick
At my school you get to go caving in grade 7. the only thing different are the caves are really tight and you practically have to crawl through.
At my school you get to go caving in grade 7. the only thing different are the caves are really tight and you practically have to crawl through.
abier: It is clearly stated that the rockets produced by UAH are NOT hobby rockets, making most of your points mute regardless.
Whenever an object of the scale of these rockets is launched, a permit is required. Otherwise we wouldn't pay for one. A model rocket has a MASS (not weight) of 1.5kg or less, perhaps this is why no permit is required for you.
Total impulse is measured by newton*seconds and is the integration of force over a given time. Units of newton/second correspond to a dimension of power*(1/distance) which has no name assigned to it that I can recall. Not saying it doesn't have a name, I just can't recall one.
And btw if you want your rockets to go supersonic without dissintegrating then you will have to get rid of those goofy wings featured in the rocket in your photo, unless your rocket is made of some VERY nice material. Check out this years USLI competition, as they plan to go supersonic for a short duration.
Please refrain on attempting to take away from our success. Or at least get your units right during your attempts.