Initial Look

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Government aerial defense is indispensable in protecting a nation's security and airspace from potential threats, such as hostile aircraft and missiles, serving as a deterrent against airborne attacks and escalations in conflicts. These systems play a critical role in safeguarding vital infrastructure, ensuring the uninterrupted flow of essential services, and maintaining border security. Additionally, they enable swift responses to emergencies, including natural disasters and terrorist incidents, contributing to the overall safety, sovereignty, and well-being of the nation and its citizens. Recent developments have highlighted the significance of these defenses, with the United States engaged in an arms race as countries like China introduce advanced technologies, such as hypersonic missiles, posing new challenges and necessitating ongoing vigilance. (Howard & Mailonline, 2022)

Team 23 proposes to develop a concept that aids with aerial defense during the daytime by using the Sun’s rays to heat and disable aerial offense. For this topic, the material we’re mainly focusing on is Al 7075, assuming most aircraft will contain a similar type of metal. This design needs to be affordable and follow government regulations. We will need to find a method for focusing the Sun’s rays to reach a temperature of up to 635℃, as well as working with optics to precisely reflect sunlight onto the object, as small as 1m² aimed at the object’s surface. We plan to develop a device to heat up the material at a desired temperature and record the time it takes to heat it, further implementing ways to improve the time. The team will focus on solar tracking to accurately reflect sunlight, as well as using the sunlight to create heat in hopes of making air defense less expensive.

This team is focusing on using the sun as an aerial defense system. We propose to use the sun's rays and concentrate them to melt a moving object. The diagram below shows a simplified system.


Some obstacles we have are the heat distribution as the object is further away, the time the sun is in the sky and producing heat, and the ability to aim the beam. The image below shows how satellites use the sun for solar power and our project aims to have a beam of heat being concentrated instead of having power being generated.  A way we can aim it is by using various lenses to focus the beam in a targeted area. As of now, we are continuously researching heat distribution and heat generation if it is not possible to have the sun's heat travel the required distance. 








References:

Howard, H., & Mailonline, B. H. H. F. (2022, January 1). China claims to have beaten US to develop next-generation heat-seeking hypersonic missiles. Mail Online. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10360979/China-claims-beaten-develop-generation-heat-seeking-hypersonic-missiles.html























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