Date of Award

7-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical and Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Matthew Jensen

Second Advisor

Razvan Rusovici

Third Advisor

Ondrej Doule

Fourth Advisor

Hamid Hefazi

Abstract

The objective of this thesis was to design an adaptive rotational motion simulator capable of replicating the attitudes of spacecrafts and aircrafts, while avoiding gimbal lock. Flight motion simulators are currently used for flight training and research, but there are many limitations to these existing systems. This thesis presents a low-cost design for a rotational motion platform titled, ‘The Controlled Human Gyroscope’. It uses a 4-axis system instead of the conventional 3-axis system to avoid gimbal lock and prevent the unnecessary motion of the user. The Human Gyroscope features unlimited rotation about the roll, pitch and yaw axes regardless of the occupant’s orientation. It will therefore provide high fidelity motion simulation and if it is paired with a translational motion platform, it can provide up to 6 degrees of freedom. Equations of motion for this specific system are presented in this paper and can be used to develop a control algorithm. A structural analysis on the load bearing components of the simulator was performed in order to validate the operating performance while maintaining a reasonable Factor of Safety. All these components passed with the minimum factor of safety being 1.6 under the most extreme loading conditions with most factors of safety above 2.9.

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