Technical Presentation-Opening

03/20/2016

COVER
Good morning respected judges. I Shubham Sagar , along with my 2
team-mates Yash Kashyap and Mukkund Sunjii, stand before you to
present to you the advanced class aircraft.
We, Team Assailing Falcons have been participating in SAE Aero-Design
since the past 6 years. From being a group of Aviation enthusiasts, we
have become an organized team with an aim of being the best in the
world.
Until last year we took part only in the Regular Class. This year is our first
attempt in the Advanced Class with almost 10 months of hard work going
into making our aircraft; The Carvao.
DESIGN OBJECTIVES
This years mission for the Advanced Class requires the aircraft to
successfully perform 3 tasks: Taking off, dropping the Payloads and
Landing.
These requirements meant that our aircraft must be able to lift heavy
payloads which can be distributed between Static and Dynamic.
Structural limitations, Material Availability and Propulsion limitations
however did not allow for a very large aircraft and high values of drag.
Based on optimization of the scoring formula for the highest score; this
years objective was to build an aircraft producing enough lift for 12
pounds of Static Payload and stable enough to drop at least 2 dynamic
payloads. Factors like wing drooping, maximum static thrust of 10lbs,
ease of fabrication and ease of shipment were also important in the
decision making process.
TEAM PROCESS
We are a team of 15 members, and 4 leaders, one for each
department of Design, Structures, Fabrication and Electronics and
Management; and finally our captain Milan Patel, who has an experience
of almost 3 years in Aero-Design.
We start preparing almost a year before the competition. The initial
phase is understanding the design process of an aircraft and research on
different existing aircraft designs, structural means of acquiring high
strength to weight ratio, power plant performance and the feasibility of
using either of these for making our aircraft.

Next, the design team sets out to build the aircraft on pen and
paper. This is where environmental factors, propulsion limitations,
structural limitations, and mission requirements come into play. Different
designs meeting the requirements are proposed to the structural team
which decides their feasibility based on structural complexity required to
maintain the strength of the aircraft i.e the ease of fabrication.
Once the design is selected, the structural team works upon making
the aircraft light and strong, whereas the design team starts working on
the Design Report and the Propulsion Systems.
Alongside, the management teams works upon ways to bring
sponsorship and funds to ensure efficient and smooth functioning of the
team.
Finally the aircraft is fabricated by all the 15 members of the team.
It took nearly 2 weeks to completely assemble a flight-worthy aircraft.
The last 2 months before the competition are devoted to test flights,
damage repair and design/structural improvements based on pilot
feedback and flight data gathered by the DAS on board.

SCORING FORMULA
The scoring formula is fairly simply. In simply tells us that the more
Static Payload is lifted, and the more Dynamic payload is dropped; the
more total score you have.
However going into the details, we realize that its not that simple.
For example if we drop one payload into the 30-40 ft zone while lifting
4lbs, we will end up with a score less than what we can achieve by lifting
a static payload of 8lbs and dropping none. We have also strived to
minimize the penalties that can be imposed upon us.
A simple code was written to optimize the scoring formula for the
maximum score, the only constraint being the number of droppable
payloads being <=4 for the feasibility of the task. A number of
possibilities emerged and the one chosen was to lift a static of 12-15lbs
and dropping 4.

CONTEXT DIAGRAM
As far as the design process is concerned, the team followed an
ordered and a systematic method, one which is adopted by reputed
industries around the world. The team developed a context diagram which
greatly streamlined and simplified the design process. Essentially a flow
diagram, it illustrates the sequence of steps involved in a product design.
It also marks the scope or the boundary of a system and the interrelationships that exist between the different design parameters.

As you can see, the context diagram is essentially divided into 3

parts, namely conceptual, preliminary and detailed stage. It also
accurately reflects all the efforts that the team put into designing Carvao.

TRADE STUDIES
The design started with researching into various wing configurations
and plan-forms. The wing configurations were aggregated into a
morphological chart and their pros and cons were evaluated. Due to a
large wing span, a greater emphasis was put on the structural simplicity
at the wing roots. Finally by assigning figure of merits to each
configuration, a rectangular mid-wing was chosen. The next step was to
choose the suitable airfoil that would meet the requirements of the
design. Beside the lift characteristics, the airfoils Cl max and moment
behavior under low Reynolds number condition were also evaluated. Of
the different airfoils that were under consideration, the S1223 airfoil met
the design objectives that were previously mentioned.

VEHICLE SIZING
The preliminary design stage primarily involves iterating the sizing
of the wing, empennage and the fuselage. As far as the wing is
concerned, with the aspect ratio in hand, the different combinations of
span and chord were generated within the bounds of the design space.
Once the respective lift requirements were met, the Oswald efficiency
factor was calculated by observing the Trefftz plot obtained using AVL.
Subsequently, a rough preliminary estimate of the drag was also
calculated.

STABILITY AND CONTROL

The process of designing the empennage starts with setting a
volume coefficient which indirectly dictates the efficiency of the
stabilizers. By referring historic data and analyzing its effect on the static
stability using XFLR, which is based on Vortex Lattice method, the volume
coefficients of the stabilizers were finalized. Owing to the general class of
aircraft, a static margin of 10.5% was chosen. The diagram to my left
shows you the moments, the CG and the neutral point of the aircraft.
Using panel method, the control surfaces were appropriately sized.
By comparing them to historic data, the derivatives of control authorities
offered by the control surfaces were found to be within the acceptable
range.

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
After estimating the essential parameters related to the lift, drag
and stability of the aircraft, the next step was to assess its performance.
With the aid of in house soft wares, the team was able to plot key
performance characteristics of the aircraft. The takeoff run of a fully
loaded Carvao was calculated to be 157 ft. assuming still wind conditions.
A flight envelope was plotted and the corresponding stall and maximum
velocities were derived from the plot. Lastly, the landing distance of the
aircraft was estimated to be 281 ft. by considering the friction coefficient
to be 0.3. Also, by evaluating the V-n diagram, the load factors
experienced by the aircraft during sustained pitch ups and rolls
were calculated and found to be within the structural limits.

POWER-PLANT ANALYSIS
Requirements state the use of an IC engine(s) having a max of 0.46cuin
displacement. We shortlisted 2 engines on the bases of power output, cost
effectiveness and thrust. First was the OSAXII 0.46 and the second was
JETTFire Rear Exhaust 0.46, both being single cylinder 2 stroke engines.
The JettFire was chosen as it produced 30% more power than the OSAXII,
turning an 11x5 propeller at 15000rpm, producing a static thrust of
9.5lbs. Dynamic thrust produced by the prop. Allowed the aircraft to climb
at _____m/s and attain a max. velocity of ______ at full throttle and
payload. (Include dynamic thrust graph/max. velocity graph and torque
curves).
//Include chart of propeller.
PAYLOAD DROPPING MECHANISMS/AVIONICS
The results obtained from the scoring analysis keenly affected the
design of the payload dropping mechanism. With the team deciding to
drop 4 payloads on a single pass, any subsequent lag that would occur
during the dropping sequence must be completely eliminated. The team
produced contraptions employing different mechanical mechanisms. After
testing and evaluating the prototypes, the final model would employ 2
extra high torque servos and high tensile nylon strings to release the
payloads on command.

MATERIAL RESEARCH

The team decided to take full advantage of the unique properties

offered by composites. Possessing extremely high strength to weight
ratio, composites can be found in key structural components of the
Carvao. We focused our attention on different composites including glass
fibre, kevlar and woven carbon fiber. We went a step forward by
sandwiching layers of carbon fiber, balsa and aero-ply. Face wrinkling and
Core failure are some of the failure modes that were needed to be
considered when it came to using the sandwich material in the Carvao. By
comprehensive testing and simulation, it was ensured that the sandwich
material passed von misses criteria under extreme flight conditions. For
manufacture, vacuum bagging technique was employed to bind the 3
materials together. Resin and hardener were used in a ratio of 9:1 and it
took 24 hours to produce a single component.
Our main-frame of the fuselage is composed of 4 CF tubes and 4 of
bulkheads which house other components. An exploded view is shown.
Finally we searched for a material strong enough to enclose sand for
our dynamic payloads. We selected a fabric called _____. It can withstand
____kg/cm^2.

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS

//add path for payload

Every component of our aircraft underwent extensive stress and flow

analysis. CFD was performed for the aircraft as a whole, and separate
stress analysis using ANSYS was performed on landing gear and boom.
For different bank angles, the load factor was found out using AVL
(Athena Vortex Lattice). Results of these simulations are shown. Some of
these results were replicated using weights. A factor of safety of 1.5 was
always assumed. A drop test from a height of 2 meters was performed on
the fuselage and boom and Stress analysis for varying loads was
performed on the landing gear. We also used the Universal Testing
Machine on the CF tubes.
Since the wing-span is quite long, a telescoping design using hollow CF
rods was used in the main spar. In that, a 16mm CF rod houses a 14mm
rod which in turn has a 12mm spar overlapping it. This provided us with
the rigidity and strength of the CF, preventing wing drooping/clapping.
Also, near the aileron section, alternate transverse running 5mm balsa
strips and 8mm aluminum rods were added to prevent wing twisting.
To prevent our tail section from twisting on the circular boom, wires have
been used. They provide enough tension to prevent torsional moment on
the empennage.

WEIGHT BUILD-UP
Even before the team set out to design the aircraft, it was cordially
decided that the aircrafts weight must come up to be lower than 8lbs. At
the end of fabrication, the aircrafts weight was 8.2lbs without the
installation of avionic systems and 9.5lbs after.
Here is a chart depicting weight estimates of each of the main
components of the aircraft and their actual weights.

EMPERICAL RESULTS
The last 2 months before the competition involved extensive testing
of the aircraft. Each test flight lead us to an important revelation about
our design and structure. The stability of the aircraft and structural
integrity of the aircraft proved to be excellent however some of the
problems with the aircraft were wing flexing and sloppy control surfaces
due to broader ailerons. The OSAXII 0.46 produced enough thrust to lift
only ___ lbs. Being our first attempt at the advanced class and working
with an IC engine; tuning our engine took almost 2 months.
As a result, we re-enforced our wings with hollow aluminum spars,
tuned the OSAXII as our back-up engine and used aluminum spokes for
equal transmission of force on the aileron.

SCHEDULE BREAK-DOWN