Students from Oklahoma State University’s Department of
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering have designed storm penetrating air
vehicles. The unmanned aircraft are designed to penetrate
thunderstorms, including the supercells that spawn tornados, and obtain
meteorological data vital for weather forecasting.
“Oklahoma, along with many regions in the U.S., has to
deal with severe weather year round but the often violent thunderstorms
witnessed in the springtime are particularly worrisome,” said Jamey
Jacob, an MAE professor who oversaw the project.
“Better prediction
methods can save lives, but this also requires more data about how
storms form.”
The vehicles collect important information about weather
systems that can be used for both immediate forecasts of the storm’s
path and strength and for predictive models. The data can also be used
in numerical simulations to aid meteorologists in their understanding of
tornado genesis.
Three teams of OSU aerospace engineering juniors
participated in the project: the Barnstormers, the Flying Honey Badgers,
and the Stormtroopers. Each team designed a vehicle with corresponding
onboard sensors, ground control, launch and recovery systems that could
be deployed from a catapult or unimproved surface, such as a dirt road.
The aircraft, controlled by a pilot on the ground, would penetrate the
storm and relay data back to the ground crew. Some of the teams’
designs also included provisions to deploy meteorological sounding
devices, which would provide extra data about the thermodynamic
properties of the storm system.
Additional photos avialable at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ostatenews/sets/72157633519366990/
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario