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Design of a Nuclear Propulsion System for an Unmanned Aerial

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Design of a Nuclear Propulsion System for an Unmanned Aerial DESIGN OF A NUCLEAR PROPULSION SYSTEM FOR AN UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE By Ronald David Turba Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE in Mechanical Engineering May, 2011 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Dr. Alvin Strauss Dr. George Cook DEDICATION To my family and friends Who not only celebrated my victories But continued to have faith after my defeats ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor Dr Al Strauss for his guidance and support throughout this project. His knowledge in the field and his professional colleagues helped me get through many obstacles. I would like to thank Dr Steve Howe of Idaho National Laboratory for his knowledge and research of nuclear fuels. In addition, many of the participants from the 2009 Space Nuclear Systems Forum in Huntsville, Alabama presented research on nuclear fuels and systems which coincide with this thesis. I would like to thank Dr George Schmidt of NASA Glenn Research Center for his work on nuclear propulsion and his advice on nuclear airplanes. Finally, I would like to thank the Tennessee Space Grant Consortium for their financial support of my research. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION .................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. x Chapter I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 What is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle ............................................................................. 1 History of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle ........................................................................ 2 Drawbacks to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ...................................................................... 3 Using Nuclear Energy ..................................................................................................... 4 II. SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE ............................................................................... 5 Gas Turbine Engines ....................................................................................................... 5 Internal Combustion Engine............................................................................................ 8 Solar Electric Propulsion ................................................................................................. 9 Nuclear Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTG) ............................................ 10 Design of a UAV ........................................................................................................... 12 III. STATE-OF-THE-ART TECHNOLOGY ................................................................... 13 State-of-the-Art Gas Turbine ........................................................................................ 13 State-of-the-Art Internal Combustion Engine ............................................................... 14 State-of-the-Art Solar Electric ...................................................................................... 15 State-of-the-Art Nuclear GPHS .................................................................................... 16 iv IV. SYSTEM COMPARISONS ....................................................................................... 18 Trade-off Analysis......................................................................................................... 20 Size and Weight .......................................................................................................... 20kkkkkk Efficiency ................................................................................................................... 21kkkkkk Safety .......................................................................................................................... 22kkkkkk Reliability ................................................................................................................... 23kkkkkk Lifetime ...................................................................................................................... 24kkkkkk Fuels .......................................................................................................................... 25kkkkkk Cost & Availability .................................................................................................... 26kkkkkk Public Acceptance ..................................................................................................... 27kkkkkk Choice of Engine ........................................................................................................... 28 V. HISTORY OF THE NUCLEAR AIRPLANE ............................................................. 29 Beginning of the Research ............................................................................................ 30 General Electric‟s First Attempt ................................................................................... 32 General Electric‟s Research Role .................................................................................. 33 Development of a Bomber using Nuclear Propulsion ................................................... 38 Project PLUTO .............................................................................................................. 40 Influence of the USSR................................................................................................... 42 Cancellation of all Funding ........................................................................................... 43 VI. PROPOSED SYSTEM ............................................................................................... 48 Chosen Design............................................................................................................... 48 Fuel ............................................................................................................................ 48kkkkkk Possible Designs ........................................................................................................ 50kkkkkk Current Engine Used ................................................................................................. 52kkkkkk Diagrams of the Design ............................................................................................. 56kkkkkk Wing Design ............................................................................................................... 59kkkkkk Changes in Materials ................................................................................................. 60kkkkkk Public Acceptance ..................................................................................................... 61kkkkkk Safety .......................................................................................................................... 61kkkkkk Availability of Fuels ................................................................................................... 62kkkkkk v Economics .................................................................................................................. 62kkkkkk Probability of Production .......................................................................................... 63kkkkkk Critical Assessment ....................................................................................................... 64 VII. CFD MODELS OF THE ENGINE ........................................................................... 67 Constructing the Model ................................................................................................. 67 The Simulation Set-Up .................................................................................................. 70 Take-Off Conditions ..................................................................................................... 71 Simulations at Various Altitudes................................................................................... 74 VIII. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 87 Future Work .................................................................................................................. 88 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................. 90 vi LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1: Picture of Tropical Storm Frank from a Global Hawk taking data for NASA ... 3 Figure 2: Picture of a typical turbofan engine .................................................................... 6 Figure 3: Brayton cycle diagram on an enthalpy-entropy diagram. ................................... 7 Figure 4: Diagram of a piston in an internal combustion engine. ....................................... 9 Figure 5: An example of a UAV powered by solar energy .............................................. 10 Figure 6: Diagram of a General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) RTG. .............................. 11 Figure 7: Picture of the RQ-4 Global Hawk. .................................................................... 14
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