{"501711":{"#nid":"501711","#data":{"type":"news","title":"GT-AE Grad Student Tom Neuman Takes Top Award in NASA Challenge","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAn airplane developed by Tom Neuman, MSAE \u002715, has won top honors in the graduate division of NASA\u0027s 2014-15 University Design Challenge: All-electric Aviation Vehicle competition.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe designs for The Vapor, Neuman\u0027s 3450-pound, hydrogen cell-powered, four-seat airplane will be reviewed again, in October, when the recent ASDL grad has been invited to present it before experts at NASA\u0027s Langley Center.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022It\u0027s a competitive design, so it\u0027s already generated some interest from employers,\u0022 said the 24-year-old Marietta native, who completed co-ops at Boeing, Sikorsky, and Rolls Royce while a student GT-AE.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022It\u0027s really been quite exciting.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENeuman was the only one-person team to take on the challenge, which tasked student engineers to design a four-seat vehicle that could carry at least 400 pounds of extra cargo, fly at least 575 miles during a single flight, cruise at a speed of at least 150 miles-per-hour, and be able to take off in less than 3,000 feet under normal conditions.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnd it would have to be competitive with standard piston-engine airplanes that burn aviation fuel by 2020.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022But those were just the minimal standards,\u0022 said Neuman.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022The real goal was to be able to travel 1000 miles at a speed of 190 miles-per-hour, with a payload of 800 pounds. And the game wasn\u0027t one of pure number analysis either. They wanted to see a plane that could compete in today\u0027s market, with components that are available now to manufacture it.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt an estimated production cost of around $547,500, the Vapor was competitive with the Cirrus SR-22, one of the most popular single-engine gas-powered planes on the market. Not only did it meet the distance and payload demands, Neuman\u0027s plane was also shown to be 16 decibels quieter and to consume 3.8 times less fuel than the SR-22.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022We may not have hydrogen refueling stations everywhere yet, but there are economically feasible ways to develop hydrogen on site. It can be derived from natural gas, or biomass,\u0022 he said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022And its only emission is water vapor.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPerhaps the most challenging aspect of the design process the development of a validation tool that would benchmark the Vapor\u0027s performance. Up until a few years ago, most electric or fuel-cell-powered planes were too small and too slow to meet the NASA specs.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022I had to analyze large electric powered planes because that\u0027s what I\u0027m designing,\u0022 he said. \u0022Now there are a few larger electric airplanes in production that I can use to validate Vapor. The numbers I got were aligned with reality.\u0022\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"An airplane developed by Tom Neuman, MSAE \u002715, has won top honors in the graduate division of NASA\u0027s 2014-15 University Design Challenge: All-electric Aviation Vehicle competition."}],"uid":"30502","created_gmt":"2016-02-17 11:41:58","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:20:46","author":"Sapna Mistry","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-08-03T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-08-03T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"501691":{"id":"501691","type":"image","title":"Tom Neuman","body":null,"created":"1455904800","gmt_created":"2016-02-19 18:00:00","changed":"1475895261","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:54:21","alt":"Tom Neuman","file":{"fid":"204731","name":"neuman_tom_0.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/neuman_tom_0_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/neuman_tom_0_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":158536,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/neuman_tom_0_0.jpg?itok=LA3dT_HW"}}},"media_ids":["501691"],"groups":[{"id":"1239","name":"School of Aerospace Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"136","name":"Aerospace"},{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"}],"keywords":[{"id":"100921","name":"ASDL"},{"id":"126111","name":"GT-AE"},{"id":"408","name":"NASA"},{"id":"132471","name":"Tom Neuman"},{"id":"169936","name":"University Design Challenge"},{"id":"7338","name":"vapor"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":["kathleen.moore@ae.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}