Olin Aero/Design Build Fly
I joined a newly re-formed AERO in the Spring of 2016. For the first year, AERO was building quadcopters with the intention of developing some fundamental understanding of unmanned aerial systems.
In the Fall of 2016, I was given control of AERO and set out to expand the role of AERO at Olin. I felt that there was an insufficient number of aerospace pursuits at Olin, and set out to enable students to pursue aerospace projects by providing financial and administrative support through AERO. AERO would take funding from donors and sponsors, and provide funds to student teams. By the Fall of 2017, AERO had expanded to the parent organisation of three separate project teams, each competing in their own unique competitions. These teams are:
The International Aerial Robotics Competition: Building fully autonomous aerial vehicles designed to fulfill novel, interesting challenges as defined by the rules of the Internation Aerial Robotics Competition (rules here).
Design Build Fly: Designing and Building highly specialized fixed-wing remote control aircraft to fulfill a variety of missions (rules here). On top of being President of AERO, I was Propulsion Lead for Design Build Fly in the 2017-2018 year, and Financial Manager for 2017-2019.
Olin Rocketry: Designing and building custom rockets with the intention of competing in the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (rules here).
Design Build Fly
For the 2017-2018 season the competition was to design and fly aircraft that:
Carries passengers and cargo
Is easily field-serviceable with most major components (propeller, servos, motor, battery)being line-replaceable units (LRUs) that also fit in the cargo compartment.
Minimizes wingspan and weight
Uses no lithium based batteries
With these restrictions in mind, and after doing some scoring analysis, we decided that the benefits of minimizing wingspan and weight far outweighed the benefits of adding more passengers or cage, and designed a small aircraft that carried one passenger and one cargo block. The aircraft was to be made of a carbon-fiber fuselage with vinyl coated balsa-wood wings.
With an aircraft built we traveled to competition in Wichita, KS where we would be competing against 100 other teams in three flying missions and one ground mission. Our first flight ended in failure as our over sized ailerons flipped the plane while compensating for a gust of wind and the plane suffered a relatively major crash.
Fortunately we repaired all the damage to the aircraft in what remained of the first day, and went on to fly the remaining missions over the next two days, eventually placing 11th out of 101 teams in the overall standing at the end of the competition.
One of the key focuses of the Design Build Fly competition is effectively documenting the work performed by each team. Team’s are not only graded on their reports, but a preliminary report determines whether a team qualifies to compete, and the final report submitted before competition is a significant part of a team’s final score in the competition. The reports typically include details for every design process for the aircraft. This includes configuration selection (Tractor vs Pusher, monoplane vs biplane, traditional vs tandem vs canards) all the way through composite manufacturing techniques. A copy of our report for the 2017-2018 competition can be viewed here.
Design Build Fly’s first year was undoubtedly hectic, and a massive opportunity to learn and to grow for the small team that competed that year. For most of us, this was our first major aerospace project, and a genuine trial by fire in terms of learning all of the relevant skills to be competitive. The 2018-2019 competition in Flagstaff, AZ calls for a much larger aircraft, and we’re lucky enough to have a team three times the size of the team from last year. We hope to continue the momentum DBF has built, and to cultivate skills in our new members that lead to the continued success of them and DBF moving forwards.