Featured Biographies

Margaret Donovan

University of Maryland

I am a graduate research assistant at the University of Maryland in the Aerospace Engineering department working under Dr. Anubhav Datta. My research focuses on the testing and validation of unconventional rotor blades in extreme environments. A particular test case of interest for this research is Martian flight. To fly in such an unforgiving, low density atmosphere (1% the density of Earth), geometrically advanced rotor blades must be fabricated. The University of Maryland is working in conjunction with NASA's Rotor Optimization for the Advancement of Mars eXploration (ROAMX) project to continue pushing the boundaries of extraterrestrial flight. The unique blade featured in my PhD research has introduced me to unprecedented obstacles in blade fabrication, like a 1% thickness-to-chord ratio at the tip that must be addressed through innovative solutions and progressive iterations. These blades have been fabricated, and they are being tested in vacuum to obtain non-rotating and rotating frequencies and strains. This test data will be used to validate the University of Maryland's in-house 3-D analysis software, X3D.