April 18, 2010
More than thirty Aerospace Engineering undergraduates headed to Wichita, Kansas this weekend to compete in the annual AIAA Design Build Fly competition sponsored by Cessna/Raytheon Missile Systems. Two UT teams, Batwing and Texas Flight, will compete against more than 75 university teams across the world for the speed, loading capability and efficiency with a payload of the airplanes they designed and built specifically for this year's missions.
"They're doing as good this year as they've ever done," said Dr. Armand Chaput, the faculty adviser for the teams. "This is all about getting hands-on experience building real airplanes that have all the elements of the big, expensive ones."
This year's mission goals drove each team to use radically different designs for their airplanes, each optimized to gain points in different areas. The three parts of the mission include an unloaded airplane's speed on a half mile loop; the time it takes the team load 6-10 softballs into their airplane before three untimed laps; and the airplane's time on three laps carrying one to five softball bats.
Aerospace senior Charles Gilbreath, who did the CAD for both teams, said Texas Flight designed a plane that would minimize the softball loading time while Batwing used a more conventional plane design due to its better performance predictability.
"Texas Flight is taking an unconventional design and trying to get better performance from it," Gilbreath said. The Texas Flight airplane, for example, has forward swept canard pushers, but the placement of the wings will make softball loading much faster.
Vishnu Jyothindran, an aerospace senior and Batwing team leader, said their airplane will lose a bit in the loading time but gain in other areas because the conventional design is more predictable and efficient.
"The other team took this as a chance to learn about working with an unconventional design," Jyothindran said. "Theoretically, if both go well, we'll perform equally well. There is no second fiddle to the other."
Both Jyothindran and Gilbreath echoed Dr. Chaput's view: win or lose, the competition is about applying classroom theory to hands-on experience.
"This is a chance for students, including freshman and sophomores, to get their hands dirty and know what it takes to actually design an aircraft," Gilbreath said.
Written by Tara Haelle
