Department of Physics and Engineering Physics

Thomas Casasola, Oliver Carleton, Ethan Bravo, Sydney Jones

The SAE Aero Design competition provides undergraduate and graduate engineering students with a real-world design challenge. These rules are developed by industry professionals with a focus on educational value and hands-on experience. These rules compress a typical aircraft development program into one academic year. This competition exposes participants to conceptual design, manufacturing, system integration/test, and verification through demonstration.

Jackie Praino, Henry Mieczkowski, Elijah Boer, Maya Lorenzo, Matthew Dorfman

Lincoln Beach is a historically black beach in New Orleans East that operated during the Jim Crow Era and closed due to desegregation. Recent redevelopment initiatives have resulted in the need for a pedestrian bridge to transport attendees from the site's proposed parking lot, to the beach located on the opposite side of Hayne Boulevard. To develop this design our team utilized Revit for the 3D design, Risa-3D for the online structural analysis, and a number of civil engineering manuals to produce the proper hand calculations.

Eli Schmidt, Gavin Kelly, Joseph Thompson, Renee Dumars, Camille Neumann

The goal of our project was to create a jazz band of self-playing robots capable of performing songs together. The band consists of a piano with 88 playable keys, a drum set, and a saxophone. The band can play songs via MIDI input or as instructed by a musical.

Ying Stock-Bordnick, Aaron Luo, Qifei Wang

With the demand for clean energy becoming more prevalent, solar energy has become one of the largest sectors of renewable energy, subsequent to hydropower and wind energy. To compete in the quickly growing solar industry and help Tulane reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, we are working to create a hybrid thermal-photovoltaic solar receiver on the roof of Flower Hall that has greater efficiency than what is on the current market. The receiver we are developing has already undergone a few prototypes, and we are now on the third version of the receiver (SFR3).

Kiowa Wells, Todd Jackson, Gabe Epstein

Scalable Constructs for Advanced Lunar Activities and Research (SCALAR) is a modular lunar infrastructure designed to support sustained human presence on the Moon. Developed for NASAs RASC-AL competition, SCALAR integrates novel In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), In-Space Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM), and advanced life support systems to establish an architecture that can be deployed anywhere on the lunar surface. The design incorporates inflatable habitat technologies, bioregenerative life support systems (BLSS), and nuclear microreactors to ensure long-term operational stability. A key innovation of SCALAR is the experimental Ammonia Reduction of Regolith Oxides into Water (ARROW) system, which enables efficient production of water, oxygen, and metals from lunar regolith, enhancing self-sufficiency and reducing dependence on Earth resupply. With a focus on sustainability, adaptability, and technological innovation, SCALAR aims to help lay the groundwork for humanity’s future in space.

Nicolai Chopin, Gabriel Richheimer, Benjamin Fried, Kenneth Barnabee

Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission struggles with isolating and controlling the temperature in their lunar lander’s control box. There is a need for technology that varies the thermal pathway between sensitive hardware due to the need for heat rejection during the Lunar Day, and heat retention during the Lunar Night. We have created a switch that controls the thermal pathway using thermal expansion so that heat will flow out of the lander during the day and stay insulated at night.