Location
Innovation Lab Atrium
Start Date
4-3-2025 2:00 PM
End Date
4-3-2025 3:30 PM
Presentation Date
3 April 2025, 2:00pm - 3:30pm
Biography
Collin Gentry is a second-year PhD student in Aerospace Engineering, and a Kummer Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) Doctoral Fellow. His advisor is Dr. Henry Pernicka. Collin earned his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from Missouri S&T in 2023 and proceeded directly into the PhD program. He has been involved in the Missouri S&T Satellite Research Team (M-SAT) since summer 2021 and is currently serving as the team's Student Director. His research interests include spacecraft systems engineering, multidisciplinary design optimization, and satellite thermal analysis. Collin is also an intern at Sandia National Laboratories, working on quality engineering for systems-level projects.
Meeting Name
2025 - Miners Solving for Tomorrow Research Conference
Department(s)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Document Type
Poster
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
event
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2025 Collin Gentry, All rights reserved
Multidisciplinary Design Optimization of a Notional CubeSat Mission
Innovation Lab Atrium
Comments
Advisor: Henry J. Pernicka
Abstract:
Spacecraft missions are complex, interdisciplinary projects that face numerous systems engineering challenges resulting in cost and schedule overruns. As the space industry grows and moves towards smaller, faster, less expensive missions, the need to simplify the design process is apparent. This project demonstrates the use of Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) to improve the design of a notional CubeSat mission. A program was developed to conduct Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) to minimize cost subject to several constraints. The program evaluates the design through several disciplinary analyses include power, thermal, and orbit. From the initial design, the program successfully reduced the spacecraft cost by over 50%. This optimized design can be used as the starting point for further engineering, saving significant development time.