Location: Cambridge, MA | 09/2023 - 05/2024

 

This was a team capstone project in the form of a collaboration between Harvard University and NASA JPL in the creation of an affordable, lighter-than-air craft capable of week-long sustained flight and in-situ environmental data collection.

 

I led the design and testing of the structural and lifting subsystem. This involved directing the entire engineering lifecycle of the system from ideation and prior art, requirements generation and validation, initial designs and iterations, build and subsystem testing, and finally two flight tests. From my efforts, my subsystem ensured compliance with 9 out of 12 design requirements under highly stringent budget and timeline constraints. This included the design and considerations regarding the gaseous envelope and lifting mechanism of the platform, as well as the physical design of the fixed and actuated control surfaces in collaboration with the Avionics team. 

 

Testing included various phases such as leak and proof testing of the envelope, deflection of control surfaces under sustained wind speed, actuator integration and validation with the Avionics team, and full system integration and checkup prior to flight tests. SolidWorks was used for mechanical design and assembly work, ABAQUS CAE was used for Finite Element Analysis, and COMSOL was used for Computational Fluid Dynamics.