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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, November 25, 2013 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

diagram of human powered helicopter
photo of Inderjit Chopra

Inderjit Chopra

"Gamera: A Human Powered Helicopter"

photo of human powered helicopter

ABSTRACT -- Since August of 2008, the University of Maryland’s Team Gamera has been engaged in an ongoing effort to advance innovations in human-powered helicopter flight. A talented team of more than 100 undergraduate and graduate students from the A. James Clark School of Engineering invested thousands of hours into the project, reaching new landmark achievements, including the current world records for flight durations for a human-powered helicopter. Gamera is a quad-rotor configuration with each rotor diameter of 47-ft, connected through an ultra-light truss, with maximum dimension of 125-ft, and weight of 82-lbs. In May 2011, Team Gamera gained attention for their first record-setting 4.2 seconds flight of the Gamera I, and recently in September 2013, Gamera II-XR achieved a world record flight of 97 seconds

SPEAKER -- Dr. Inderjit Chopra is the Alfred Gessow Professor in Aerospace Engineering and Director of Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center at the University of Maryland. He received his Sc.D. (Aero & Astro) from MIT in 1977 and joined NASA Ames/Stanford University Joint Institute of Aeronautics & Acoustics, where he worked for four and half years on the development of aeroelastic analysis and testing of advanced helicopter rotor systems. In 1981, he joined the University Maryland as a faculty member and has been working on various fundamental problems related to aeromechanics of helicopters. His direct graduate advising resulted in 48 Ph.D. and 84 M.S. degrees, and his students are now playing dominant role in rotorcraft industry, academia and federal labs. An author of a textbook on smart structures theory, 190 archival journal papers and 350 conference proceedings papers, Dr. Chopra has been an associate editor of the Journal of the American Helicopter Society (1987-91), Journal of Aircraft (1987-cont.) and Journal of Intelligent Materials and Systems (1997-13). He was awarded the 2002 AIAA SDM Award, 2002 AHS Grover E. Bell Award, 2001 ASME Adaptive Structures and Material Systems Prize, 2002 A. J. Clark School of Engineering Faculty Outstanding Research Award, 2004 SPIE Smart Structures & Materials Lifetime Achievement Award, 2009 AHS Alexander Klemin Award, 2011 American Helicopter Museum & Education Center’s Achievement Award and 2012 AHS Igor Sikorsky International Trophy. He has been a member of the Army Science Board (1997-2002), NASA (NRC) Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (2007-cont.) and NASA (NRC) Research and Technology Roundtable Board (2011-cont.). He is a Fellow of AIAA, a Fellow of AHS, a Fellow of ASME, and an Honorary Fellow of American Helicopter Society.


Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov