Concept Questions
Concept 1:
Balloon cluster Design:
Design your own balloon cluster which can carry you (and maybe your pet) above the city where you live. Assume flights on a calm day at an altitude of at least 1000 feet above ground level.
Start with finding appropriate forces using a free body diagram. What role does the atmosphere play? Explain your problem-solving strategy, size your contraption, estimate unknown parameters, and calculate the compliance with key design criteria. Your submissions should include all the assumptions you made, and deliver the size and number of balloons you need. How do you plan to navigate? Up/down? Are there any dangers? How do you mitigate them? Discuss your approach and results with your classmates.
Concept 2:
Communicating vessels
Find technical examples from the ancient or modern times within civil or mechanical engineering, which make use of the physical effects of communicating vessels. How does gravity get involved? How about liquids, which don’t mix? Is a static fluid always a good assumption? Any other chemical, or process engineering applications you can think of?
Concept 3:
Steady and Unsteady flow
Concept 4:
Jet lev
Concept 5:
Hurricane Camille
Hurricane Camille was a Category 5 hurricane when it hit Mississippi on August 17, 1969. Camille’s 190 mph sustained winds at landfall were the highest winds ever recorded for a hurricane hitting the US. On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the same region of the Mississippi coast, making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane with 130 mph sustained winds.
Camille’s eye had an 11 mi diameter eye, and the radius of maximum sustained winds reached approximately 15 miles. Katrina, though, had a larger 37-mile diameter eye, and hurricane-force winds extended out 120 miles to the east of the center. Katrina’s radius of maximum winds was about 30 miles.
Camille drove a record storm surge of 22.6 feet to Pass Christian, Mississippi, while Katrina’s storm surge exceeded Camille’s at all locations, topping out at 27.8 feet at Pass Christian (Fritz et al., 2008).
With the given information and assuming the flow outside of the hurricane’s eye is approximated as a free vortex, perform a simple calculation indicating how a Category 3 hurricane’s storm surge could exceed that of a Category 5. Also discuss wind speeds, pressures, densities, and temperatures at the eye of hurricanes.
Concept 6:
Concept 7:
Estimate the velocity as a function of altitude (up to 120,000 ft.) for a parachutist exiting an airplane or high altitude balloon. Assume standard atmospheric conditions. With respect to Mach numbers, what velocity/acceleration regimes to you expect? What assumptions do you need to make? Do you need oxygen? How about temperature? When is a good time to deploy the parachute? Are there any real-world examples (test pilots) you can think of? What happens in the case when no parachute is deployed, like in the example given? How would you target the safety net? Discuss your solutions and options with your classmates.