 OSU teams placed first and second in the AIAA Student Design/Build/Fly Competition, the nation’s largest aerospace engineering student competition, for the second consecutive year. OSU Orange team’s flight crew is shown changing out the payload from their plane as part of a timed sortie during the contest at Patuxent River Naval Air Station. OSU was sponsored in the competition this year by |
Independent
teams representing OSU’s
OSU
teams have participated in the competition for
eight of its nine years, placing first and third
in 2001 and first and second in 2004.
“Simultaneously
taking first and second in this contest is an
accomplishment no other university can claim,
and OSU has now done it two years in a row,” said
Dr. Andy Arena, Maciula Professor of engineering
at OSU and the teams’ faculty adviser. “Our
students’ performance is all the more impressive
considering the level of competition and the
fact there are 66 accredited aerospace engineering
programs in the
The contest requires
students to design and fabricate an unmanned,
electric-powered, radio-controlled aircraft to
accomplish specified flight mission objectives
and then demonstrate its capabilities. The missions
are updated each year, but the goal remains a
design that balances quality handling with high
performance and may be manufactured practically
and affordably.
“This year
you could choose from three separate missions,
but your plane had to perform two of them,” said
mechanical and aerospace engineering senior Nick
Wilson, chief engineer for the first-place team,
OSU Black. “Both of our teams decided to
focus on the categories that offered the most
potential points, the internal and external payload
missions.”
The payload was
two lengths of plastic pipe, each weighted to
three pounds and carried within the plane’s
fuselage or on its wingtips. The timed, internal
mission was divided into four flight segments.
Between each loaded and unloaded sortie, a flight
crew scrambled out onto the tarmac and removed
or restored the cargo with the aircraft remaining
grounded until they all returned to a designated
area. The clock ultimately stopped following
the final, unloaded sortie when the flight crew
ran onto the runway, disassembled the aircraft
and stowed it in a case.
Payloads were
carried on the plane’s wingtips during
the external mission. As the aircraft taxied
on the runway between a loaded and unloaded sortie,
the pipes had to be released by remote and dropped
in respective, designated zones. The mission
was also timed and concluded when a flight crew
disassembled its plane.
“The technical
difficulty is significant because the payload
almost weighs as much as your aircraft,”
Final scores were
determined with a formula that combined flight
mission scores; a rated aircraft cost assessment
based on plane size and design and construction
man-hours; and a technical report score. OSU
Black took first with 301 points, and OSU Orange
scored 298.
While differing
in shape, propulsion specifications, undercarriage
design and payload carrying, handling and release
capability, OSU’s entries were both fiber
composite, conventional body planes weighing
approximately 7.5 pounds. Both teams used the
OSU College of Engineering, Architecture and
Technology’s Design and Manufacturing Laboratory
and wind tunnel and the Perry airfield of The
Charles Machine Works Inc.
“Even though
he lives in Guthrie, our pilot Dan Bierly comes
up and flies our planes for us at Ditch Witch’s
runway, and all the extra practice probably gives
us a big advantage over a lot of teams,” said
Wilson, who has accepted a job with Lockheed
Martin in
“The DML
is our biggest resource in terms of what we can
produce. It’s where we do all of our fabrication,
construction and assembly, and both teams have
separate design rooms where we do the majority
of our work,” he said.
The students complete
their entries as semester-long
projects in the aerospace engineering senior
design course. Headed by a chief engineer and
divided among aerodynamics, structures and propulsion
groups, the teams act as small companies.
“Few of
us have experienced anything that will prepare
us for professional employment like this class
and competition,” said mechanical and aerospace
engineering senior and OSU Orange chief engineer
Ronya Rolen. “We’ve had to go back
and reference everything we’ve learned
and put it to work on one major project.”
“We designed
a plane for a competition, built it and placed
second. You really can’t get better preparation
to go out into industry than that,” said
Rolen, who will work in
OSU’s success
hasn’t gone unnoticed by the aerospace
industry. North Texas-based L-3 Integrated Systems hired
five students from OSU’s 2004 first- and
second-place teams, including both chief engineers.
Several firms have become team sponsors, and
recruiters for others spend evenings with students
at the DML, sharing pizza and their company pitches.
By February or March most students are weighing
a number of employment offers from the competitive
companies, while others are waiting at the contest,
according to Arena.
“They weren’t sponsors, but people from NAVAIR were at the competition watching, and when it was over, they came up and asked our students if any of them wanted to interview for jobs,” Arena said.
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