| NSF Org: |
TI Translational Impacts |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | March 28, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | March 28, 2017 |
| Award Number: | 1740374 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Anita La Salle
TI Translational Impacts TIP Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships |
| Start Date: | April 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | April 30, 2018 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $50,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $50,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1400 TOWNSEND DR HOUGHTON MI US 49931-1200 (906)487-1885 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1400 Townsend Dr. Houghton MI US 49931-1295 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | I-Corps |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): | |
| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.084 |
ABSTRACT
The broader impact and/or commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to implement a software package can improve aircraft designs, especially for high altitude, high wind speed conditions. Aircraft design is interdisciplinary, and important considerations include aerodynamic load computations and external surface design. There are many physical factors and parameters that must be considered in different design stages, such as, 1). Fast conceptual or preliminary designs with approximate parameter estimations; 2). Prototype development; 3) Optimizations. An improved development of an aircraft design can create many benefits, e.g., optimal control surfaces can enhance maneuverability; save long term airplane operation cost; and improve the missile strike accuracy. This software package offers fast and accurate estimations on different performances from the size, geometry, numbers, and locations of small aircraft control surfaces. The package can help aerospace design engineers to perform fast preliminary designs with correct inclusions of physical parameters as well as to perform accurate computations for late stage optimizations. The product may significantly reduce demands on labor, time, space, materials and devices compared to current design methods.
This I-Corps project further develops an improved Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling software based on groups of air molecules and their collective behaviors. This overcomes limitations of most CFD packages, which assume dense gas flows, when applied to high altitude applications where air is dilute and rarefication effects should be considered. The process developed here also overcomes typical limitations of single molecule dynamics where the simulation results are accurate but slow, making them impractical for most engineering applications. The simulation techniques developed here can be fast and have rarefication effects properly included. By using this proposed software packages, accurate databases can be established, with many combinations of size, shape, locations, and number of control surfaces. Interpolation functions will be incorporated in the package as well to further increase the computation speed.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The Principle Investigator (P.I.) for this project, Dr. Cai from the Michigan Technological University (MTU) worked on multiple research projects during the past ten years, concentrating on developing new computational fluid dynamics technologies. The P.I. feels there is a potential to setup a small business company to commercialize his recently developed technologies as special software packages. These packages can help design and optimize aircrafts and spacecraft, with better accuracy and less cost. With this goal, he formed a team and participated the NSF I-corps training program for market survey and potential customer identifications. The team consists of three members from MTU: the P.I., one of his Ph.D. graduate students, one mentor; and a co-mentor from related industry.
Through the comprehensive trainings with the NSF I-corps program, the team learned that it is not a trivial task to setup a small company and develop business. It is much complex than what they thought. There are many factors shall be considered. The biggest challenge is value/customer identifications, and market surveys. The training program is very helpful, with two cohorts. Faculty members lead the teaching and discussions. Different groups share their findings/lessons, and comment/help other group’s work. Each team performed at least 100 out-of-building interviews, most of them are in-persons, and there are many video and phone interviews, most interviews are hold in U.S. but there are international travels and interviews.
From the training program, the team, especially the P.I. realized that it is very challenging to setup a business and the effort is very demanding. Technology is only a part to develop a successful business company. There are many mistakes which should and can be avoided, and there are several approaches can help the company cut cost, for example, finding collaborators or partners.
In the end, the team realized that,
- There is no big enough market for the P.I.’s product inside the U.S.; however, there are big potentials and opportunities in international market;
- The same technology for this aircrafts/spacrafts design and optimizations, can also be used in other industry sectors, such as materials processing with plasma flows in the semi-conductor industry, only minor adjustments are needed;
- The team also identified a company which has products can be complementary to the P.I.’s product, and some potential collaboration relations with that company are successfully established and developed.
In general, the P.I. felts the NSF Icorps program is very helpful. For many professors, in many situations, they have good solutions, but they have difficulties to find the problems and applications. This training program taught many mistakes that the team shall avoid, and serves as a wakeup call. In the end, the P.I. decided to wait for a while to setup his company, instead, some further research plans are formed, which can further develop the technology. Very likely in a few year of further development, the chances to successfully setup a small company can be much higher.
Last Modified: 05/01/2018
Modified by: Chunpei Cai
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