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Jaden Hernandez's Project Portfolio

Analyzing the Aerodynamic Performance of Flexible Finite Wings

FEA of Flexible Wing

April 2025

Status: Completed | Deliverables available!
As the final experiment for the Aerodynamics Laboratory (AAE 33401) course, a custom experiment was developed that would test the aerodynamic performance of flexible, finite wings in a wind tunnel. More specifically, these wings would be additively manufactured with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and would have varying levels of stiffness. When faced with high freestream velocities, the most flexible wings yielded surprising aerodynamic and structural behaviors.

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Workflow to Estimate Heat Transfer for High Altitude Flight

Estimated Heating Characteristics Graph

March 2025 - May 2025

Status: Completed | Deliverables available!
In collaboration with Anish Agarwal, Shreesh Nalatwad, Noah Smith, and Will Stupart, a MATLAB interface was developed to estimate heating characteristics from forced convection and conduction for a simulated sounding rocket. Users are also able to approximate insulation thickness needed to protect avionics and other internals. By leveraging lumped system analysis, simulation time is reduced by over 90% compared to Ansys Fluent while only yielding ~10% error, making this a valuable tool for early rocket design iterations.

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Nak-seung Patrick Hyun Research Program: Translational Ornithopter

Unsteady Vortex Lattice Model Simulation

February 2025 - May 2025

Status: Discontinued | Deliverables available!
Under the advising of Dr. Nak-seung Patrick Hyun and in collaboration with Andrew Hadikusumo and Darin Tsai, a biomimetic translational ornithopter robot was in development while Ptera Software's unsteady vortex lattice method was utilized to determine aerodynamic characteristics of the wing-flapping motion based on varying linkage lengths and ranges of motion.

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Five Dynamics: Unmanned Controls/Avionics Test-Bed

UCAT Version 4

January 2025 - May 2025

Status: Discontinued
Due to a need for low-stakes testing of avionics and control systems for future rocket projects, the Unmanned Controls/Avionics Test-Bed (UCAT) was designed to provide a simple testing vessel for avionic communication range and eventually control surface deflection dynamics.

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Five Dynamics: Polaris Rocket

Polaris Iteration 2

January 2025 - Present

Status: Hiatus
Alongside Gilbert Chang, the Polaris series of rockets powered by Loki Research's solid rocket motors was in development with the intent of providing suborbital launch capabilities to investigate the possibility of high altitude rocket launches which may be able to support small payloads for more accessible microgravity research.

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Mars Sample Retrieval Mission Design

Northrop Grumman Space Award 2024 Presentation

September 2023 - December 2023

Status: Completed | Deliverables available!
In collaboration with Alayna Miller, Shreesh Nalatwad, and Nischal Suhas, a 72-page report was authored detailing a hypothetical Mars sample retrieval mission based on mission parameter calculations done in MATLAB with the patched conics approximations.

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