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The HPEP (High Performance Electric Propulsion) thruster is expected to be the outcomecof an innovative project initiated by the Swedish Space Corporation. It combines the concept of a 10 kW electrodeless plasma thruster designed by the Elwing Company and the ADN based monopropellant LMP-103S developed by ECAPS and used in the HPGP thrusters of the Prisma Satellites. Using a chemically energetic propellant in an EP thruster will allow mass and cost reduction by providing two propulsion systems sharing the same tank. This thruster will be suitable for the apogee raising manoeuvre of geostationary satellites; it will allow to carry more transponders and to obtain a better return on investment than with a classical apogee kick motor. This Master Thesis focuses on the design and test of the injector that will thermally decompose the liquid LMP-103S so it can enter in the plasma chamber in a gaseous state. The heating power required by the injector is calculated, which leads to a final design composed by a cartridge heater of 400 W inserted in a stainless steel cylinder. The liquid flows through seven other holes drilled around the heater. This injector is tested at both atmospheric and low pressure with deionized water. Results regarding the power required to vaporize water confirm the theoretical estimation. Steam flow without any liquid droplets is achieved in steady state at low pressure with a maximum temperature on the surface of the injector between 230°C and260°C.

The Polarized Gamma-ray Observer Lite (PoGOLite)  is a balloon experiment which will  measure polarization of soft gamma rays in the energy range of 25 - 80 keV. Together with PoGOLite will also an auroral diagnostics package called Alfvén Labo- ratory Balloon ExpeRimenT (ALBERT) fly to measure auroral emissions as well as the surrounding background. The main part of ALBERT is two spectrophotometers that consist of a photo multiplying tube, lenses and a Fabry-Perot etalon. The Fabry-Perot etalons are mounted in a lens mount  that  is angle adjustable with  a stepper motor based linear actuator.  To support the instruments and to keep the etalons at a stable temperature  there are an multitude  of sensors and controllers at work.  The sensor data is collected organized and stored in a onboard memory as well as sent down to ground for real time analysis. This thesis covers the design and construction of the electronics as well as the VHDL  code for the main controller.  It is also supposed to work as a manual over how to run the experiment.

Nonplanar wing configurations promise a significant improvement of aerodynamic efficiency and are therefore currently investigated for future aircraft configurations. A reliable mass prediction for a new wing configuration is of great importance in preliminary aircraft design in order to enable a holistic assessment of potential benefits and drawbacks. In this thesis a generic numerical modeling approach for arbitrary unconventional wing configurations is developed and a simulation tool for their evaluation and mass prediction is implemented. The wingbox is modeled with a nonlinear finite element beam which is coupled to different low-fidelity aerodynamic methods obtaining a quasi-static aeroelastic model that considers the redistribution of aerodynamic forces due to deformation. For the preliminary design of the wingbox various critical loading conditions according to the Federal Aviation Regulations are taken into account. The simulation tool is validated for a range of existing aircraft types. Additionally, two unconventional configurations, the C-wing and the box-wing, are analyzed. The outlook provides suggestions for extensions and further development of the simulation tool as well as possible model refinements.

It is aim of this thesis to develop a potential ow solver for unsteady aerodynamics in MATLAB environment. In order to achieve this target a vortex lattice method based has been developed. The validation of this program involves two dierent stages. Initially, it is compared with classical experiments and a well tested code. In a second step, the program is compared with wind tunnel experiments for two dierent aircraft's con gurations, classical and with canard. In the end it will be demonstrated that the present method achieves good agreement in both stages.

This report concerns my internship at EADS Astrium, in the A5 development mechanical loads section, between January 10 and July 8, 2011. There, engineers work with several software such as ADAMS and PERMAS. This internship showed that it is possible to use PERMAS models in an ADAMS simulation by exporting-importing them. Simulations on ADAMS may become much more time consuming and an industrial use of this method is not possible before some improvements on the interface software have been done.

This report, along with Laurent Gourc’s and Ben Marchant’s reports, presents the work done on the development of the new AcBuilder, realized for CEASIOM. CEASIOM is a package of different modules, developed as part of the SimSAC project, which aims to Simulate Stability And Control Characteristics for Use in Conceptual Design. First, the CEASIOM software is introduced in the context of the SimSAC project and, to know where the development of the aircraft builder tool (AcBuilder) is, an overview of the previous version is shown. Then, based on the issues noticed by the users and the programmers of CEASIOM, the goals of the project are presented in listing some modifications and improvements to bring to the software. Secondly, the document treats about the requirements for the new AcBuilder development in order to reach the goals of the project. Those requirements come from both the programming languages used (Matlab and Java) and from the technical parts of the project (geometrical construction of aircraft). Finally, this report presents the new AcBuilder tool, its new design interface, its new functionalities and the remaining improvements to implement in order to make the module compatible with the changes brought by the new requirements.

To reduce the product life cost of aircrafts, the conversion of major load bearing components from aluminium to carbon fibre reinforced plastics have been proposed. Large load bearing components require significantly thicker composite laminates than conventional. These ‘Ultra-Thick Laminates’ require studies into the out-of-plane behavioural and material properties before it can be used commercially. Cohesive Zone Modelling and Arcan empirical testing are chosen to help investigate these properties and behaviour of Ultra Thick Laminates. The Cohesive Zone Modelling method in the commercial FE-software, MSC.Marc Mentat, is validated by comparing results with standardized thin coupon tests prior to further simulation. Arcan tests are to provide material properties to improve accuracy of simulations. However, Arcan test rigs designed prior to the start of this thesis was not suitable for providing correct data and adjustments to the test rigs are needed. Alternatives to the Arcan test have been proposed and considerations of these tests are underway. Nevertheless, Cohesive Zone Modelling is applied to a realistic Ultra Thick Laminates component with the available material properties to provide context. The Cohesive Zone Modelling has shown to be accurate at predicting the behaviour of delamination onset, but the load-displacement predictions were not as accurate in the Ultra Thick Laminates component as in the Cohesive Zone Modelling validations. The sources of discrepancies in results are conceptualized and the Cohesive Zone Modelling remains a viable and potentially powerful method in delamination analysis. However, more development is required in the implementation of Cohesive Zone Modelling for larger components, such as Ultra Thick Laminates components, for Cohesive Zone Modelling to become a robust and standard analytical practice.

The Tahitian company ‘Electricité de Tahiti’operates two out of eight power groups named G7P and G8P equipped with SCR units to limit the pollution of these groups.The real impact of these units is to be assessed. By using an atmospheric dispersion model called AERMOD,it is shown that the results are very similar with and without the SCR units, as the heights of the chimneys and the wind profile of the valley induce a good dispersion of the fumes for these two groups.

This project presents the work performed within the aerodynamics department of Airbus Operation SAS inToulouse through a ve months master thesis. This department works with the industrialization and the use of tools developed by laboratories to perform CFD aerodynamic simulations. The primary purpose of the present work was to support the development of gust analysis methods based on CFD. A new gust model has been developed and integrated to the aerodynamic solver elsA.This solver has been used in order to compute the unsteady aerodynamic simulations for both gust loads and forced motions with CFD. The results were then compared with those from a Doublet Lattice Method computation for validation. Once the validation phase was ended with good agreement between the two methods, a Chimera simulation has been carried out.