Date of Defense

4-17-2018

Date of Graduation

4-2018

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

First Advisor

Kristina Lemmer

Second Advisor

Asghar Kayani

Abstract

To protect astronauts from high-energy radiation during long-duration missions, an electromagnetic radiation shield was designed and sized for the Orion spacecraft with physical dimensions at a 1:100 scale and magnetic fields and particle energies at a ∼1:10833.3 scale. The electromagnetic radiation shield was simulated in the multi-physics software Comsol using the Magnetic Fields and Particle Tracing modules. The scale model used a DC amperage of 60 A with a 9-turn solenoid wound in three layers and the full-size system used a DC amperage of 6500 A and a 5-layer solenoid of 390 turns per layer. These models generated magnetic fields of .047 T and 5.4 T, respectively and were exposed to particle energies of 0.932 keV and 27.7 keV for the small scale and 10 MeV and 300 MeV for the full-size. A parametric sweep of the particles’ energy from 10 MeV to 300 MeV was conducted on the full-size model. The results from these simulations indicated that the magnetic fields generated by the magnet were sufficient to deflect incoming particles away from the simulated capsule at low energies, up to 50 MeV, but only provided a reduction at higher energies (above 100 MeV), roughly halving the experienced radiation. A physical model was then built out of yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) superconducting tape and tested by using a gaussmeter and particles in WMU’s particle accelerator to validate the magnetic flux density and particle trajectories seen in the Comsol simulations­­­

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Open Access

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