Provided by Tamy Guimarães
Mechanical engineer to lead floatplane optimization project in the Amazon
September 23, 2022
By Ashley WennersHerron
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund awarded Tamy Guimarães, assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering, a yearlong $34,000 grant to optimize amphibious aircraft for operations in the Amazon Rainforest. The project, in partnership with Brazilian institutes Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and Centro Universitário SENAI CIMATEC, received roughly $125,000 in total funding.
The U.S. Department of State, U.S. embassies, Partners of the Americas, corporations and other foundations support the innovation fund as a mechanism to spur higher education collaborations between the United States and other countries in the Western Hemisphere, with a focus on partnerships that enhance institutional capacity, increase student exchanges and strengthens regional educational cooperation, according to their website.
“The Amazon region plays a key role in the control of global environmental conditions and is, at the same time, a region of considerable economic importance because of the Zona Franca de Manaus, a most important industrial hub in Brazil and South America,” Guimarães said. “With an area of almost 7 million square kilometers, transportation in the region is a major issue.”
Roads are rare, difficult to navigate and often in poor condition, but Guimarães said that environmental concerns limit land road improvements or expansions. As a result, transportation needs rely on water and air approaches.
“Fast transport by air is something essential in relief and medical support, but airfields are scarce and proper airports only exist in a few towns, mostly located close to a river,” Guimarães said, noting that river levels can rise significantly over the year, limiting airfield operations. “Amphibious aircraft, generally described as flying boats or floatplanes, are therefore a wise solution for fast transport, since they may use the rivers as runways but can also land on hard surfaces.”
According to Guimarães, while amphibious aircraft have been in use in this region since the 1930s, the planes’ current design — with floats required for water work that create drag in the air, for example — is inefficient.
“There is still considerable margin for improvement to provide more efficient and reliable amphibious operations in the Amazon region,” Guimarães said. “We will computationally and experimentally investigate the geometries of amphibious aircraft to develop and propose improvements in their aerodynamic performance.”
The grant will support the contributions of a faculty member and two students from each collaborating institute. The students from all institutes will participate in a hybrid course offered by the Penn State Engineering Leadership Development program prior to traveling to Brazil during spring break in 2023 to meet in person at the Brazilian universities. The Brazilian participants will spend a month at Penn State during summer 2023 to complete final experiments, analyses and conclude the project.
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