During the summer of 2022, I had the privilege of attending the NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS) mission 3 where I traveled to NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC). I was placed on a team where we were tasked with doing a gap analysis for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and trying to come up with a solution to bridge said gap, which we would then present in front of a panel of NASA engineers.
During this gap analysis, we decided to focus on electric aircraft and more specifically their flight range, which was extremely limited. When trying to think of a way to improve the flight time of electric aircraft I came up with the concept of using Faraday’s law of induction to try and recapture some of the kinetic energy from the propellers as electrical energy and then return it to the power bank, therefore improving flight time. The design I came up with was encompassing the propellers diameter with a shroud that would have strong embedded magnets. As the magnets passed a coil, they would excite the electrons in the wire and therefore created an electromotive force, also known as a voltage.
I was awarded an OSGC OrION Internship to continue my research and pursue the construction of a miniature working model as proof of concept. At this time, I have an almost working model that has been completely designed and printed by myself as well as with some assistance from the Space Physics Engineering Atmospheric Research (SPEAR) team, led by Dr. Aaron Coyner and Krystal Hopper Meyers, at Southwestern Oregon Community College. I successfully ran the miniature model with one active coil in it and produced real-world data.