DESIGN, BUILD AND FLYGROUP PROJECT, UNIVERSITY OF

LIMERICK 08/09

Domhnall Morrissey

University of Limerick;
Castletroy, Limerick, County Limerick, Ireland

Keywords; DBF, Aircraft, Conceptual, Design

Abstract
The following paper presents an aircraft conceptual design project. The project
was carried out by aeronautical engineering students of the University of Limerick (class of
08/09). The aim of the project was to design and build a radio controlled aircraft capable of
carrying out a set of pre defined tasks. The report will focus primarily on the work carried out
by the author but an overview of the overall aircraft design will be provided.
The primary tasks were the ability to carry either a 4 litre simulated fuel tank or a
set of 4, model rockets (2 on each wing). The rockets weighed 0.68 kg each. In addition to
this, each payload needed to demonstrate the ability to be remotely released.
The flight testing was carried out at the university's rugby grounds. The first
flight was carried out with no payload in board. This flight highlighted instability of the
aircraft with a tendency for it to bank to the right. Later it was concluded this was due to each
wing being aligned at slightly different angles resulting in the banking moment. Slight
movement of the empennage-fuselage assembly with regards to the wing was also concluded
to have played a part. The second flight without payload was carried out with the ailerons set
to trim the moment out. This was carried out successfully.

Introduction
The project was initialised at the beginning of the semester with a meeting in week 1. The
project brief was to design a radio controlled aircraft to carry out pre-designated tasks. The
class was split into 2 teams of 15 who design separate aircraft. The requirements for the
aircraft were then presented. These were based on rules published by the American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). These rules form the guidelines for the AIAA's
Design Build and Fly (DBF) competition. This is competition open to aeronautical students
the world over. It's aim is to provided engineering students with practical experience of
aircraft design from early concept designs through to the final testing of the craft.

Empennage Conceptual Design

Empennage Design Considerations

The empennage was required to fulfill the following requirements;
1. Provide sufficient stability & control
2. Be able to withstand all forces acting upon it
3. Be as lightweight as possible
 The primary design tasks were thus to decide on a layout, to size the stabilisers
and control surfaces, to design a method of attaching the empennage to the fuselage, to chose
lightweight materials and wherever necessary to design strength reinforcing methods. The
weight breakdown of the aircraft gave an overall weight (without payload) of 3.95kg. Of this
the empennage would constitute up to 0.24 kg. This was the design weight target.

Early Design Concepts

From an early stage it was known that the fuselage would consist of a carbon
fiber boom running from the wing to the empennage. This fact dictated much of the design
philosophy of the empennage. The major concern was to be able to design a empennage that
could be attached firmly to such a small contact area.
The first design decesion to be taken was the configuration. Several variations
were considered including a t-tail, h-tail,v-tail and conventional. Both the t-tail and cruciform
configurations were considered to have some potential aerodynamic advantages, however
assembling the stabilisers together in these configurations would involove greater complexity
in the final assembly. This would be required as the large forces acting on the horizontal
stabilisers would shear it off the vertical stabiliser if not properly fastened. The v-tail would
add extreme complexity into the control surfaces operation (Raymer 2006). Wih limited time
and resources this was not considered a practical option. This left the conventional style
configuration as the remaining option. The horizontal stabiliser would give a large surface
area to act as a platform for the connection to the fuselage.
The next task was the design of the fuselage-empennage connection. The first
iteration was to connect the fuselage tube directly to the bottom of the horizontal stabiliser
using brackets. Already at this stage of the project it had been decided to manufacturer the
stabiliser from polypropylene (see below). This material would not be suitable the screw
brackets onto. This led to a second iteration of the design where the brackets would instead
be screwed into a plate. This plate would then be embeded into the bottom of the horizontal
stabiliser and glued in place. The main concern with this configuration was the rotation of the
empennage around the carbon tube and how to prevent it (Ryan et al 2009).
This led to the final iteration of the design where the brackets where abandoned.
In their place a box seection was placed with a hole drilled into it. The hole would house the
carbon fiber boom. The box would then be glued to the plate. Bolts would be passed through
the the box to secure the boom in place with respect to the rest of the assembly.

Sizing
Sizing of the aircraft was done by the use of horizontal (CHTT) and vertical tail
volume coefficient (VHTT). These are constant values that relate the diemensions of the wing
and tail along with the moment arm (Raymer 2006). They are given by the following
equations;

LVT S VT
C HTT = (1)
bW S W
L HT S HT
C VTT = (2)
CW SW

LVT and LHT are the vertical and horizontal moment arms respectivaley. These are defined as
the distance from the quarter chord of the vertical/horizontal tail sections to the quarter chord
of the main wing section. SVT and SHT are the areas of the vertical and horizontal stabilisers.
CW, bW and SW are the chord, wingspan and area of the main wing area (Raymer 2006).
The diemensions of the wing were provided by those charged with it's design.
The moment arm was provided by the design team of the fuselage. This left just the tail
coefficients and the tail areas left as unknowns in the equations above.
A study was conducted into designs of DBF aircraft entered into previous competitions. The
reports from these entries provided the required data. Also included in the data set where
coefficient values from a homemade aircraft. An average value of the coefficients was
calculated in both cases. The following table (Table I) was produced;

Table I. Tail Coefficients of Successfull DBF Designs (Ryan et al 2009)

The following values were taken to enable the calculations to be completed;

2
SW = 1.2 m
CW = 0.5 m
BW = 2.935 m
LVT = LVT = 0.8435 m

Subsitutuing into equations (1) and (2) gave the following areas for the vertical and
horizontal tail;
SVT = 0.10872m2 SHT = 0.271 m2

The next stage of sizing was to determine the diemensions of the rudder and
elevator. It had already been decided that both control surfaces would extended the full with
the stabiliser they were attached to. So the remaining diemension to be determined was the
chord percentage it would comprise of. There was no possibility of conducting a full stability
and control analysis of the aircraft due to time and resource restrictions. A study of
successfull DBF designs was carried out to determine what control surfaces designs other
teams had choosen. The table below (Table II) was constructed.

Table II. Tail Diemensions of Successfull DBF Designs (Ryan et al 2009)

 An analysis of the data collected and also advice from the pilot who fly the
aircraft led to a decesion to design both the elevator and rudder to 35% of the chord of the
horizontal and vertical stabilisers.

Empennage Materials Selection

Stabilisers
From an early stage it was known that the stabilisers and control surfaces of the
empennage would be manufactued from polypropylene. This was due to the large stocks of
the material available in the University as well as facilities for forming it. Polypropylene is
also relatively light weight. The only other option that was briefly considered was to build a
series of ribs and stringers to create a frame for the stabilisers. A skin of lightweight plastic
sheeting could drawn over this frame to create the surface of the stabiliser. It was concluded
that this method would be time consuming and assembling the final frame with sufficient
structural rigidity would be difficult.
There were two forms of polystyrene available to the team. Expanded
Polypropylene (EPP) 20 and 40. These materials are similar to the polystrene protective
packaging found in electrical goods boxes. 20 and 40 referes to the density of each material
in grams per liter (g/l) (Ryan et al 2009). EPP 20 was white in colour whilst the EPP 40 was
blue. In terms of stiffness it was found that in long thin sections EPP 20 lost most of it's
ridigity. It instead became a very flexible material. In thicker sections it's ridigty inproved
drastically but it was never able to match EPP 40 in this area. In general EPP 40 was a
stronger stiffer material, but this came at the cost of double the density.
The final material selection was to build the vertical stabiliser from EPP 20. The
horizontal stabiliser, rudder and elevator where manufactured from EPP 40. The vertical
stabiliser was a short section reinforced by dowels, therefore ridigity concerns of using EPP
20 were negated. The long horizontal stabiliser however required the use of EPP 40. Controls
surfaces would be required to deflect into the airstream with significant forces acting upon
them, thus the use of EPP 40 was paramount.
Balsa wood was choosen for the plate embeded in the horizontal stabiliser as well
as the central box section. The decesion was taken to laminate the wood to provide strength
in several directions. Blasa wood is incredibly light. The density of the wood choosen was
140 kg/m3 . One it's own the strength of the balsa wood would not have been sufficient
however when laminated in layers it's strength increases greatly (Ryan et al 2009).
The dowels in the vertical stabiliser were made from carbon fiber tubes. This
were leftovers from another project being carried out in the department so were easily
available. These dowels provided tremendous stiffness to the vertical stabiliser at little weight
penalty.
Empennage Manufacturing
Manufacturing of the polypropylene aerofoil sections was carried out using the
hot wiring technique. This involved initially placing a aluminium template of the section on
each side a polypropylene block. Then a hot wire was drawn over the template. The cut-offs
were removed leaving the aerofoil section behind. This was a two person operation. The wire
had to held at each side by an idividual.
The elevator was made simply by cutting off the required aftward portion of the
horizontal stabiliser. A second vertical stabiliser was made from EPP 40 such that the rudder
could be created in the same manner. Simple plastic hindges were used to hold the control
surfaces in place and allow rotational movement.
To embed the plate into the horizontal stabiliser the following technique was
used. A channel was cut out of the bottom of the stabiliser. It's width was equal to that of the
plate whilst it extended the entire span of the stabiliser. The plate was then glued firmly into
place. Finally two blocks were cut from the cutoff and were glued into the recess on either
side of the plate.
 Overview of Final Aircraft Design

Figure 1 below shows the final assembly of the aircraft.

Figure 1. Final Aircraft Assembly

The aircraft as can be seen was designed to be a tail-dragger. This configuration

was chosen as it was believed to be the best way of keeping the center of gravity within the
required limits no matter what payload was chosen.
The landing gear design features no springs for simplicity and to reduce weight.
The main landing gear consists of a single aluminium piece. The dark bands along the side of
the landing gear is a composite cut-off piece. This was added to increase the stiffness of the
unit and reduce the displacement during landing, thus reducing the risk of a propeller strike.
The rear landing gear consists of a balsa tail skid glued onto the empennage connection box.
The wing aerofoil section was SD7062. This was a thick, relatively low camber
aerofoil section. The low camber allowed the section to easily cut from EPP 20. A spar ran
through the wings. It was balsa wood beam with strips of carbon fibre glued to the top and
bottom sides of it. The wings could be detached from one another. Their assembly point was
in the central wing box where the two spars were bolted together to this central structure.
The central wing box is the wooded section seen in figure 1 , at the leading edge
of the wing. It was used to join the wings (as described above) but also used to house the
batteries. The batteries can be just seen in the photograph as the purple bands running in the
lateral direction of the aircraft. This location was chosen as it had minimal impact on the
c.o.g. The batteries were left partially exposed to the airstream to allow them to be cooled,
reducing the risk of fire. The final role of the wing box was to house the firewall to which the
motor was attached.
The motor is out of view in figure 1 but is located just behind the right propeller
blade. The model was a Hacker A60-18M having a peak power output of 2.2KW (Ryan et al
2009). It as offset by 5.4° from the aircraft centre line to compensate for the torque of the
engine which acted to pull the aircraft to the left.
 Flight Testing
Flight 1
The first flight was carried out without any payload and served to ensure that the
aircraft was airworthy and capable of controlled flight. It would consist of 1 circuit around
the University's rugby grounds. The flight was carried out but flaws in the manufacturing
became apparent. Shortly after taking off the aircraft banked sharply to the right. It also
seemed to be very sensitive to pitch changes and ascended and descended very abruptly. The
aircraft was completed landing safely and without damage.

Flight 2
Before the second flight was carried out an attempt was made to decrease the
instability of the aircraft. This involved tweaking the zero position of the ailerons. This would
induce a left banking motion in the aircraft with no input from the controller. This was
intended to cancel out the natural banking motion of the aircraft to the right. When this was
completed a repeat of the first flight (with no payload). This time the aircraft demonstrated
little instability with regards to banking. There were still some slight signs of pitch instability
however. The landing was again carried out without incident and it was agreed to make an
attempt at flying with the payload.

Flight 3
The final flight was to be flown with the external fuel tank as the payload. The
flight however did not get past the take-off stage. The unscheduled second flight had used up
a significant portion of the batteries charge and on take off they ran out leaving the aircraft
with no propulsion. The aircraft did however left off the ground just before the engine cut
out. This was significant as it proved that sufficient lift had been generated to lift the payload.
The landing was very hard without propulsion and the tank shatter upon impact. There was
no actual damage to the aircraft itself. With no time to recharge the batteries the flight testing
was concluded at this point.

Discussion
Analysis of the results of the flight testing revealed many positive aspects of the
aircraft design but also highlighted some critical flaws. Firstly it was concluded that the
instability of the aircraft was caused by two assembly flaws. The first was that the wings had
not been attached at the same angle of attack. The left wing was at a slightly higher angle of
attack and was generating more lift than the right wing. This induced the banking motion of
the aircraft to the right. The ultimate reason for this was never determined but it was obvious
some part had not been correctly assembled.
Despite the flaws in the assembly the overall project was considered a success.
The fundamental design of the aircraft was sound and structurally it performed well. The
learning outcome of the project was that the team learned a great deal about team work and
planning. The interdependency of constituent parts of the aircraft required all team members
to be aware of every design change. Communication within the team improved greatly as the
project progressed. All deadlines were met relatively comfortably. In this regard the project
was a total success.
 References

1. Michael Ryan, Ciaran Crosby, Alan Walsh, Emma Dunlea, Nial Madden, Tim Daly,
Domhnall Morrissey, Paul McGrath, Ryan Forrey, Robert McNamara, Tommy Falvey, Shane
Prendergast, Paddy Carr & Simon Stanley ' Group B DBF Final report 2008/2009 ', (BEng
Project, University of Limerick, 2009) unpublished.

2. Raymer, D.P. (2006) Aircraft design: A conceptual approach, 4th edition. Virginia,
USA: American association of aeronautics and astronautics.