Design Competition Other Than SAE

[mudfarmer_mike]

I was at the E-week Banquet this week and spoke with some of the Aerospace Engineering students about the SAE Aero Design Competition. During the discussion I discovered another competition that they have been competing in. The AIAA "Design, Build, Fly" sponsored by Cessna and the U.S. Office of Naval Research. It's an electric plane.

http://www.ur.msstate.edu/news/stories/2003/designbuildfly.asp

[annihilator]

YEA SOMEONE FINALLY SAW IT! I'm a freshman on oklahoma states DBF team. its really amazing! i would just like to say that our university has in fact done very well in the past years in the competition! even got first a few years back! :)

site for contest is: www.ae.uiuc.edu/aiaadbf

[Sparky Paul]

I toyed with the idea of trying an AIAA plane, but when the price of the motor, speed control and battery farm edged to $1000... Nah! :)
It is a more challenging flight regime, doing a lot of flying other than a mere takeoff, 360 and land.

[MarkVZ]

I put a lot of time into building and covering the aircraft pictured in the first post. We took 8th place with that aircraft and won fastest assembly time. We pulled our plane out of the box and assembled it to flight-ready condition in 9 seconds.

We're radically changing our design and construction this year, and we're well on our way to producing a much more aesthetically pleasing, lighter, more efficient aircraft for this year's DBF competition.

How are your DBF planes coming?

[valkyrie83]

Hey,
I'm on the DBF team at U of Illinois. We are definitely lookign forward to this years competition. We just got the report finished last night. Now we get back to building the thing. Wing and tail are done, just the fuselage to go.
I'll try to post some pics of what we've got so far, and I think we are going to post our report to our teams website after its due. I'm definitely interested in seeing what other teams have been up to and what their designs look like.

Geoff

[valkyrie83]

Heres a picture of our wings with the outlines for our V-tail.

[Sparky Paul]

Are the ailerons all the way to the tip?
Don't DO that!
Tip-stall is guaranteed!

[valkyrie83]

Using near 100% aileron differential helps reduces the tip stalling tendencies. We've had ailerons go out to the tips the past couple of years with no problems.

Geoff

[Sparky Paul]

100% diff is the way to go although your constant chord wing should be better than a tapered wing for stall control.
I wouldn't chance ANY down aileron at takeoff.
Aileron coupled with rudder with the rudder doing the steering, ailerons for wings-level probably works best.

[davidfee]

I'm very sad to report that SDSU will not be sending a DBF team to the competition this year. I was really looking forward to seeing you guys and the airplanes you create. Last year was really a lot of fun for me. Good luck in Wichita!

-David

[MarkVZ]

David,

Why is SDSU not competing this year, especially after your great performance last year?

MSU's DBF team is now assembling our first aircraft after successfully molding all surfaces.

[davidfee]

Well, honestly, there was another project offered to the SDSU aero students this year and it turned out to be so popular that there weren't enough students left to build a DBF plane. The other project was a liquid-fueled rocket. The first one exploded on the pad, so they built a second... which has not been launched yet.
http://aiaa.sdsu.edu/Explosion.jpg

You guys molded your plane this year? Man, how awesome! That was my dream last year... and the plan for this year... but alas, no joy. ;)

I'm actually most curious about the water tank, filling and draining designs. The actual task of lifting and dumping 9 pounds of water isn't that hard... our '03 DBF plane could fly the mission without modifications (we tested it). The hard part was going to be doing it WELL. I eagerly await the results. :)

-David

[valkyrie83]

David,
Sorry to hear you guys aren't gonna be fielding a team this year. Your planes are always beautifully built (well, at least the last 2 years).
This year our whole design pretty much revolves around the tank system. The walls of the tank are the fuselage skins to save weight on structures. The tank is pretty tall to decrease the drain time. It definitely makes for a funny looking airplane. I'll get our renderings posted soon. A lot of time was spent trying to optimize the propulsion system for this years plane as well. Graupners are sooo much nice than Astros.

Mark,
Sounds like you guys are gonna have another great looking plane again this year too. One of our side projects for this year was to build a CNC foam cutter, which really makes cutting cores a breeze.

Time to go work on the plane.

Geoff