Electromagnetic Catapult controlled using Arduino

Published on 19 Apr 2022. Written by Bheru Singh

About the project

We all know about the golden rule spoken about in aeronautical domain. “Take off is optional but landing is mandatory”. Wright Bros changed the travel dimensions by designing an airplane which could successfully ascend or take-off, cruise in the air, descend or land successfully. A designed path or area in any airport in any airdrome where ascend and descend of the airplane is carried out is called as a Runway (as per International civil aviation organization ICAO).

Runways are of two types like a man-made runway which is made up of materials like asphalt, concrete and there are a few natural runways made generally covered with grass, ice, gravel, salt etc. but it is important to understand the role of runways in aircraft safety.

Every year, we hear about the mishaps where pilots end up at finishing corner of the runway while ascend or descend, we call these mishaps as overruns and probability of leading to overruns mishaps is high in areas largely covered by nature (sea, mountain) or city. So SFO is installing an Engineered Material Arresting System (EMAS) which could control the runway mishaps by controlling the velocity of the aircraft.

Another factor affecting the airplane ascend or descend is the inertia. So depending on the weight and rate of velocity of the aircraft, runway dimensions are decided but the flexibility of the size is limited to land but not for warships, aircraft carriers were designing a long runway has its limitations.

Engineers have found a solution to this. As we all know that ascend and descend of the airplane is completely dependent on thrust product by the airplane and the control surfaces so as to ascend the similar aircraft in a smaller runway, scientists have adopted the ancient technology of catapult, which provides an additional thrust to the airplane during ascend.

Different energy sources used in launching the airplane using a catapult, pneumatics where compressed air was used as energy, gunpowder, steam power. But all of these power sources required a large maintenance and large installation area, noise pollution etc. which posed as a demerit to application to catapult.

All the mentioned demerits are resolved by using electromagnetic energy. Basically linear induction motors and electromagnets are adopted. A control unit is used to control operation of the catapult usually a microcontroller like Arduino where we code the information which the microcontroller needs to operate the catapult.

Kit required to develop Electromagnetic Catapult controlled using Arduino:

Technologies you will learn by working on Electromagnetic Catapult controlled using Arduino:

Electromagnetic Catapult controlled using Arduino

About the project

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