Modal Propellant Gauging in Microgravity — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

Instructions

Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
A clear description of the methods used to achieve the purpose or goals for the work.
A statement of the conclusions, results, outcomes, or recommendations, or if the work is still in progress, the results you expect to report at the event.

Presenter photographs should be head and shoulder shots comparable to passport photos.

Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

Modal Propellant Gauging in Microgravity

Name: Taylor Peterson
Major: Physics
Hometown: Sturtevant, WI
Faculty Sponsor: Kevin Crosby
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Independent research
Funding: NASA Flight Opportunities, WSGC

Name: Bennett Bartel
Major: Physics
Hometown: New London, WI
Faculty Sponsor: Kevin Crosby
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Independent research
Funding: NASA Flight Opportunities, WSGC

Name: Cassandra Bossong
Major: Physics
Hometown: Kenosha, WI
Faculty Sponsor: Kevin Crosby
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Independent research
Funding: NASA Flight Opportunities, WSGC

Abstract

The Modal Propellant Gauging (MPG) team consists of multidisciplinary undergraduate researchers from Carthage College. This continuously changing team has been developing and testing a fuel gauging system for use in microgravity environments since 2008. Using Experimental Modal Analysis (EMA) techniques, the goal of the project is to develop a flight-ready fuel gauging technology by correlating the modal response of a 1-g surface to the microgravity surface response at the same fluid fill fraction. The technology has been integrated into a manned parabolic flight payload and a Blue Origin New Shepard sub-orbital flight payload. The parabolic flight payload contains two propellant tanks and is designed to measure the modal response of each propellant tank to an injected white noise signal via PZT sensors. Flight data shows that the MPG method can measure fuel with greater than or equal to 1% resolution at and below 50% fill levels. Similarly, the Blue Origin payload also measures the modal responses of the propellant tanks, however it has an extended period of time in microgravity. Under funding from the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium, the MPG team has designed, built, and tested the Blue Origin research payload which has seen flight on the New Shepard Vehicle in January and December of 2019.