SAE Aero-Design Competition

Micro Class (2015)

Supervised by: Jeff Defoe

Teammates: Richelle Dolan, Andrei Tineghe, Mitchell Campbell, Justin Abbott, David Carrick

The SAE Aero Design competition is an international competition where students from universities around the world compete to build model remote controlled aeroplanes to complete a set of pre-defined tasks. In the 2015 micro class competition, a scoring formula was defined and each team was required to design a remote controlled aeroplane which could carry a payload secured inside of a structural compartment. An additional constraint was that the disassembled form of the aeroplane had to fit within a tube of 6 inches diameter. Additional points were awarded based on the length of the tube, favouring a more compact transport size.

The Windsor Aero Design team designed and built an aeroplane with a foldable wing allowing for a chord length of 6.7 inches with a wing span of 58 inches and a total aircraft length of 27.5 inches. This aeroplane, when disassembled, was able to fit into a container of length 19.25 inches.

One of Brooks’ primary contributions to this project was his ability to translate real world properties into computer programming language. He wrote a script in the Octave programming language which, for specified initial takeoff speed, air properties, targeted cruising speed, and aspect ratio, computed the probable competition score allowing the team to select parameters that would provide the best possible competition score.

The result of this project was a first place prize for the team’s technical presentation and third place overall at competition.