May 11, 2015
The University of Texas at Austin’s Design, Build, Fly team in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics placed fifth at the 2015 annual Cessna/Raytheon Missile Systems AIAA Student Design/Build/Fly competition. The team competed against approximately 65 different teams April 10-12 in Tucson, Arizona.
The DBF competition is an aircraft design experience for engineering students that allows them to apply coursework knowledge toward a real-world project. Each year the AIAA Foundation assigns a different set of challenges that includes ground and flight missions.
To meet the 2015 DBF challenge, the UT team designed and built two airplanes. Sasha, the prototype, was used for flight testing. The competition aircraft, Roxanne, was designed and built based on what was learned in previous flight tests.
Roxanne weighs in at four pounds, is about three feet long and has a wingspan of six feet. The wings are made primarily of Balsa wood and plywood, and reinforced with carbon fiber; the fuselage was constructed using fiberglass, Kevlar and carbon fiber.
This year’s competition, “Remote Sensor Delivery and Drop System,” consisted of four sequenced components – one ground mission and three flight missions. Roxanne proved to meet the challenge by successfully completing all four missions.
The ground mission, the first of four, tested teams on their payload loading time. UT brought their final time down to 10 seconds, considerably less than their initial time of 27 seconds.
During the first flight mission, teams were required to fly as many times as possible around a 2,000 foot course within four minutes. UT completed a total of five laps.
The second flight mission called for teams to complete three timed laps while carrying a five-pound wooden block inside the aircraft. Many teams crashed while attempting this challenging mission, but UT-DBF succeeded and completed the laps in three minutes.
The final flight mission required the aircraft to carry a payload of 4” diameter plastic balls, while dropping a single ball during each lap. UT carried three balls and successfully completed the mission.
“We had a great group of incoming students who put in a lot of time and were very devoted,” said Jake Farrington, ASE major and president of UT-DBF. “The team leads worked really well to bring out the best of all the team members and came together when times were tough.”
The team of 35 members (half were first-year students) began working on the conventional remote control aircraft last September, sketching the design on paper and working out the calculations.
Eight team leads worked together to write the technical report that consisted of a detailed description of the design process used to develop the aircraft. The report is a large portion of the team’s final score, and was submitted to the AIAA DBF contest committee in February.
Throughout the process, students met with faculty advisor Dr. Armand Chaput who gave them direction and oversight. The team also received guidance from lab manager, Mark Maughmer II, Farrington said.
Farrington calculated that annually, team members contributed a combined 2,000 hours of work outside of regular coursework. The department offers students some course credit for work on student teams like DBF.
The hands-on work allows students to come in and contribute significantly to the project since the entire aircraft, other than the motor is designed and fabricated by the students, Farrington said.
Efaine Chang, ASE major and first year student, was a part of the payload team in charge of designing and building the drop system. She said that being a part of UT-DBF and working on the aircraft gave her a better idea of how everything is brought together.
It was a great experience, Chang said, to be surrounded by people who are just as passionate about the same thing.
“Seeing your airplane, something you’ve been working on for the last eight months take off the ground, that’s the best feeling in the world.”
