Titan SRMU Actuator Exhibit

For my senior design project at the University at Buffalo, I had the opportunity to work with a team of fellow students to design an interactive exhibit for the Niagara Aerospace Museum that will display and demonstrate the functionality of a Titan IV rocket actuator. Throughout the 2023 fall semester, my team worked to iterate several designs and presented our final concept to the board of trustees at the museum, in order to secure funding for prototyping in the spring. Additionally, our final poster presentation was awarded first place out of over 45 projects at the university’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Poster Competition.

In the 2024 spring semester, we designed and constructed a small-scale wooden prototype as proof of concept for our design, as the museum was not able to secure funding for the full display. With a gyroscopic sensor inside the 3D printed rocket bell, the prototype had a joystick for free, open loop control, as well as a potentiometer that could be used to set the rocket bell at specific angles through closed-loop control. A small LCD screen displayed information about the angle of the bell, and our final design earned fourth place in a prototype expo with more than 30 projects from the department.

A brief demonstration of our prototype can be found here.