Soren Sabet Sarvestany

         For my AER406 Aircraft Design Capstone course, my team and I were challenged with building a remote controlled biplane that had to fly around a 70m course subject to a pre-determined cost function, with the complete instructions available here. The plane was required to carry cargo consisting of any combination of ping pong balls (worth 10 cargo units), golf balls (worth 50 cargo units), and tennis balls (120 cargo units). 

 

The following constraints were in place: 
             1.    The plane must take-off from the runway under its own power 

             2.    The plane must carry a minimum of 100 cargo units and a maximum of 1200 cargo units 

             3.    The plane must be in the bi-plane configuration (assigned to my team by course instructor) 

 

The flight course consisted of 2 markers that were spaced 70m apart. The aircraft had to fly 3 laps (6 straight line segments) around the markers, and would be timed based on the straight line segments only. 
 

Aircraft Performance was graded based on the following cost function: 
 

             Flight score = CU * f(t) * PF * TB * CB * STB + VB  

           
       -   CU was the number of cargo units successfully carried by the plane 
       -   f(t) = t^2 - 11.2t + 32.36, where t was the average time required to fly the 70m straight distance 
       -   PF was the payload factor, which was given as PF = (Payload Mass)/(Payload Mass + Empty Mass)
       -   TB was the takeoff bonus, which was 1.25 if the aircraft could take off in < 20ft, and 1.00 otherwise

       -   CB was the configuration bonus, which was given as 1.2 for the biplane configuration 
       -   STB was a stability multiplied, given as STB = 1 + 0.025*min(T,8) where T was the straight level 
           flight time without significant pilot input. 

 

My team had 4 members including me, and there were four roles available (Performance Lead, Structures Lead, Aerodynamics Lead, & Stability & Control Lead). I chose to be Performance Lead because I've always enjoyed making mathematical models of multivariate dynamical systems, which I knew I would get to do quite a bit in this role. 

 

Content about design process still under construction. In the meantime, you can find our final design presentation and final design report available here and here respectively. Pages 16-21 in the final design report contain the majority of the theoretical work I did as performance lead, including drag calculations and the method I used to calculate takeoff distance. 

 

Pictures and Videos of the Flight and Construction Process: 

 

 

 

 

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Content under construction