Aero Design: an engineering challenge with emphasis on design
By Bob Tarlau
Photos by Bob Tarlau except as noted
As seen in the September 2012 issue of Model Aviation.
It was a cold, windy, rainy morning in mid-March, in Van Nuys, California. I was the first member of the San Fernando Valley RC Flyers (AMA club #152) to arrive at Apollo 11 Field in the Sepulveda Basin.
It was still dark, and water was beginning to puddle in the pit area. It was hard to believe that 90 minutes later, 372 students from 53 universities around the world would be here too, despite this blowing rain.
The students would be joined by faculty, sponsors, and officials from SAE International and Lockheed Martin, the principal corporate sponsor. Boeing and Northrop Grumman also support the event.
Nearby, in the wet predawn at Apollo 11 Field, were roughly a dozen of those students from two of the universities, using flashlights, braving the elements, unloading, and beginning to assemble their creations, which were one-of-a-kind aircraft they hoped would fly their schools to a top prize in the 2012 SAE Aero Design West engineering competition.
Aero Design is the airborne element of the SAE’s Collegiate Design Series, which also includes the Clean Snowmobile Challenge, the Formula SAE Series, Baja SAE Series, and SAE Supermileage. Each year Aero Design has West and East competitions. This year the SAE Aero Design West competition was March 16-18 in Van Nuys and the East was on April 27-29 in Marietta, Georgia.
Both drew international competitors with teams this year (making one or both events) from Canada, Mexico, India, Brazil, Turkey, Venezuela, Poland, and China, as well as from campuses from across the United States.
The competition uses student-designed-and-built model aircraft to lift the maximum amount of weight within the stringent rules of three classes: Micro, Regular, and Advanced. An entry must lift a lot of weight to do well. A Regular Class aircraft from Politechnika Poznanska (Poland) lifted a competition-best 29.8 pounds at our West competition.
The SAE staff says the event provides students with real-life professional engineering challenges with an underlying emphasis on design. A comprehensive design report—a maximum of 30 pages—is written by each team and is due roughly six weeks before the flying competition. Active and retired engineers read and score the reports. Then, on the Friday of the competition weekend, each university team takes its collective knowledge and its aircraft before a panel of pros.
In these oral presentations, the students deliver a 10-minute explanation of the highlights of their flying machines. This can be enhanced with projected computer graphics. In a question-and-answer session, the students are asked to defend their design thinking.
Additionally, a judge wields a stopwatch because Regular Class teams must load and unload the lead bars to be used to add competitive weight. The time limit: a minute to put them in and a minute to take them out. In the Micro Class, unpacking an aircraft from its specified-size package and constructing it is also a timed event.
The scores from the intensive grilling of each team are added to the results of the design report submitted weeks earlier and the flying follows during the next two days to produce a final score. From that comes the ranking and the prizes in the three classes: Micro, Regular, and Advanced.
Before any of the airplanes lift off in competition, they receive a thorough going-over for airworthiness on the same Friday as the oral presentations.
The Valley Flyers provided most of the volunteer inspectors. Before arriving in their crates, many of these aircraft had never flown. Sam Gengo was the event CD and he headed the Friday inspection team. He warned students in advance, “We will tug (firmly!) on your horizontal and vertical control surfaces. Hinges must be able to resist the force of a good pull. Leave a couple of hinges loose and we’ll be happy to hand you—say—your rudder for your enjoyment of taping, gluing, or pinning it back on more robustly.”
Another part of the inspectors’ job is to measure the aircraft. In Regular Class, the rules say, “fully configured for takeoff, the free-standing aircraft shall have a maximum combined length, width, and height of 225 inches.” Anything over that and the inspectors tell the teams: “The way it is, it’s not going to complete. So you’d better figure out where to chop.”
The Advanced Class has an onboard Data Acquisition System (DAS). A rolling test during the technical inspection confirms the DAS readout shows an accuracy of measurement of 1/10 foot.
Some of the teams managed to get their airplanes to Apollo 11 Field on Thursday and Friday for test flights. More than half the teams didn’t arrive at the competition with their own pilots. The host club is asked to provide pilots.
That brings us to the rainy Saturday morning and the first of two days of flying. The teams built shelters—everything from simple plastic sheeting to elaborate structures. The pilots’ briefing was at 7:30 a.m. Air boss Rick Silz intended to start the first round promptly at 8 a.m., but moments after the briefing, the heavy drizzle became a downpour.
Rick called a weather delay until 9:15. Many of the students, thinking they were coming to usually sunny Southern California, didn’t have the rain gear they needed and during the next hour, many became soaked.
At 9:15, the air boss, along with SAE staff members Sam Barill and Lonnie Dong, and Gene Holloway of Lockheed Martin, decided to further delay the flying until 1 p.m. With the danger of flooding, along with the threat of lightening and gusty winds, teams were urged to pack most of their equipment and leave the field.
We reassembled at 1 p.m at the nearby AirTel Plaza Hotel where most of the teams were staying. The decision was made to return to the field and attempt at least one round. It turned out to be a good decision. Although there were puddles and lots of mud at the field, conditions were good enough to allow each of the three classes to fly once.
That first flying round of the SAE Aero Design challenge provides bonus points to teams whose airplanes don’t carry any weight. Sometimes gusty crosswinds mixed with occasional showers made flying conditions that afternoon a special challenge for the all-electric Micro Class.
The Micro Class rules had been changed for 2012 with runway takeoffs and landings prohibited. According to the rules, the small aircraft had to be “launched either by hand, or by use of an engineered launching system having elastic bands.”
That launching mechanism, together with the aircraft itself, had to fit into a foam-lined carrying case no larger than 24 x 18 x 8 inches. Regular Class is up against strict takeoff and landing limits. Loaded with nearly 30 pounds of weight, these models have to get off the ground in 200 feet and have all wheels back down in 400.
The flying portion of the SAE’s Aero Design Series is a visual feast—with some brilliant flights, providing a view of innovative designs aloft. There are some attempts that inevitably fall short. Collapses and crashes often can mean an overnight repair job. The University of Michigan had that—its yellow monoplane failing Saturday on its turn into final. Repairs lasted until 5 a.m. Sunday.
An attempt on Sunday ended with a wing separating and fluttering down as the rest of the Wolverines’ craft plunged into weeds a long way from the runway. Months of planning and dreams suddenly crumpled.
A fellow Michigan team from Kettering University in Flint, where my son, David, is the team captain, had been fighting deadlines all the way. The Kettering Blue Bulldog Aviation team didn’t have its big tandem craft ready until Sunday then encountered disappointing on-the-runway problems and never took off.
Whether a success or a flop, each university team put forth a nonstop effort and enormous drive toward the goal of achieving successful rounds. Valley Flyers president, Chuck Thompson, put it well: “It’s interesting to see the various aircraft designs, envision how they will fly, and then see how they perform in a high-stakes contest. Each successive flight is burdened with increasing weight, so even a simple takeoff and landing is challenging for the pilot and entertaining to the crowd.”
We completed one round of flying, instead of the typical seven or eight, on Saturday. The weather had partially cleared by Sunday morning, allowing for two rounds of Micro, Regular, and Advanced Class flying. Most teams would have loved more, but three rounds provided enough of a showcase to let the best of each class shine.
The best and often most thrilling of these flights brought cheers from spectators and group hugs from jubilant team members. I commend the Polish teams on their enthusiasm whenever an attempt really paid off.
After an hour of lunchtime tallying (during which the students saw an impressive display of jet and 3-D flying by Valley Flyer pilots), it was time to award trophies. Best overall in Micro Class went to the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, with an overall (design report, plus oral presentation, plus flying) score of 249.1167 points. Polytechnique de Montréal scored first in Regular Class with 228.3183.
First in Advanced Class was the impressive graphite V-tail airplane of Boise State University with a combined score of 203.2200. The NASA Systems Engineering Award went to India’s University of Petroleum Energy Studies. Among the other awards is Best Crash, and this year that twice-failed airplane from the University of Michigan landed that honor.
Sunday afternoon was time to pack. Some of these airplanes went on to compete in SAE Aero Design East in Georgia in late April. (The same aircraft can be used in both competitions in a single year—but new ones will be required for next year.)
Other airplanes were shipped back to their universities. The good ones perhaps become showpieces; some of the others are merely a box of badly smashed parts. The memories of achievements and failings are a learning experience for these engineers of tomorrow.
The SAE Aero Design Series could never be held without both the enormous corporate support and absolutely invaluable volunteer help. To the professional engineers who give so much time to this, and to those from the Valley Flyers who provided (in some cases) weeks and even months of support, you have done a lot to enhance the chance these students have for a successful career.
SAE Design West Sponsors
Lockheed Martin
Boeing
DS SolidWorks
ANSYS, Inc.
Byron Fuels
Pointwise
NASA
SOURCES:
SAE Aero Design East
www.sae.org/attend/student-events/sae-aero-design-east
SAE Aero Design West
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