Blue Origin
Internship, Summer 2021
Internship, Summer 2021
I spent Summer 2021 in Kent, WA supporting R&D of Blue Origin’s orbital launch vehicle New Glenn.
My primary project was investigating a failure mode of the first stage heat exchanger (HEX). In preliminary subscale testing, we observed a flight-critical failure mode and I was responsible for investigating the driving system parameters, so we could ultimately size a system to mitigate the failure. I first performed a literature review which helped identify some critical variables and develop a preliminary MATLAB model. However, the model required validation through experiments so I designed test articles in Creo and developed a test plan. In testing it was challenging to replicate flight like conditions due to the smaller scale and hardware limitations, but I was able to modify my test plan and hardware to represent flight conditions. This allowed me to induce the failure mode and isolate the physical phenomenon causing the failure.
My secondary project involved the HEX control system. I was responsible for developing a real-time system we could use for controls (HITL) testing, which involved writing a wrapper in MATLAB and Simulink to deploy the controller on a Simulink Real-Time machine. I also developed a GUI allowing a test engineer to more easily perform tests and acquire data. This project taught me a lot about understanding flight algorithms, redundancy, and challenges with software and hardware interfaces.
Since these efforts were R&D and New Glenn is largely in its development phase, pictures from these projects cannot be shared. Below is a New Glenn render.
My primary project was investigating a failure mode of the first stage heat exchanger (HEX). In preliminary subscale testing, we observed a flight-critical failure mode and I was responsible for investigating the driving system parameters, so we could ultimately size a system to mitigate the failure. I first performed a literature review which helped identify some critical variables and develop a preliminary MATLAB model. However, the model required validation through experiments so I designed test articles in Creo and developed a test plan. In testing it was challenging to replicate flight like conditions due to the smaller scale and hardware limitations, but I was able to modify my test plan and hardware to represent flight conditions. This allowed me to induce the failure mode and isolate the physical phenomenon causing the failure.
My secondary project involved the HEX control system. I was responsible for developing a real-time system we could use for controls (HITL) testing, which involved writing a wrapper in MATLAB and Simulink to deploy the controller on a Simulink Real-Time machine. I also developed a GUI allowing a test engineer to more easily perform tests and acquire data. This project taught me a lot about understanding flight algorithms, redundancy, and challenges with software and hardware interfaces.
Since these efforts were R&D and New Glenn is largely in its development phase, pictures from these projects cannot be shared. Below is a New Glenn render.
To comply with ITAR regulations and NDAs, all Astranis, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman and SpaceX pictures shown are available publicly online