2024-05-29 Mechanical Meeting
Date
May 29, 2024
Attendance
Team Announcements
Item | Presenter | Notes |
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AEAC 2024 debrief | @Smile Khatri |
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Upcoming Team Events | @Smile Khatri |
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Next Work Session | @Smile Khatri | Â |
Other Announcements | @Smile Khatri |
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Updates
We won competition!! Thank you everyone for your hard work!
Many ambitious teams. Carleton, UBC Vancouver, Queens, and Sherbrooke came up with VTOL designs → all had difficulties. Carleton performed the best out of the VTOL hybrid teams.
Wind limited the VTOL teams during comp, although software was part of the weakness.
Queens
Designed the airframe using carbon fiber layup and cleaned it up with vacuum bagging
Mold made from PLA 3D prints, sanded down to be extremely smooth (Need a glossy finish)
Apply layer of wax
2 layers of carbon fiber wet layup
Peelply and one other thing (maybe breather?) I couldn’t remember when I went to write it down
Vacuum bagged to remove some excess resin
Ribs made of wood and carbon fiber for fixed-wing
Used non sag glue to attach the pieces together, ribs aligned the parts perfectly.
in task 1, their aircraft was pretty stable when rising. They did not transition from a quadcopter mode into fixed-wing (not worth the risk?). In task 2, they tried to fly in quad-only mode but the drone was tuned poorly, resulting in a small crash at the take-off location.
Wings above the cabin. Wings are attachable/detachable on both sides after the H
H configuration - props were pretty far from the fuselage
Did not transition, they struggled in quadcopter mode as well
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Carleton
Quad mode was pretty stable - even against wind
Middle section of the wing is made of fiber glass (kinda heavy)
had to sand down the fiber glass to meet <15 kg requirement
Wings made of foam covered by 1 or 2 layers of carbon fiber to reinforce it
H configuration but quad propellers are closer to fuselage
Only team with upside down V-tail (could be better for transition?)
Cause of crash during task #1
transitioned to quad, did a 180 and transitioned back at alpha really well and flew towards bravo at around 100 mph, then did a nose dive (tried to bank around waypoint B rather than transitioning like Alpha)
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UBC Aero
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VTOL design, wings were fitted (made of air-foil ribs, foam, and ironed plastic around the ribs)
~11 kg
Prop is at the nose of the aircraft (this design creates turbulent flow around the wing but prevents aircraft from being back heavy)
Attempted to transition during Task 1, but wind was extremely strong, as well as center of mass not being properly located for fixed-wing
Aluminum sheet metal landing gear design
They had a hard landing which bent the sheet metal, but they shaped it back into place
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Alberta
quad-frame
3D printed cabin using PLA
Frame is made of CF tubes with mostly 3D printed joints
Cabin is mounted in an angle, probably WRT to the drone’s most common angle of attack
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UofT
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Hexacopter design → arms made out of carbon fiber box tubes
constructed a plate out of carbon fiber and sandwiched foam (probably for more stiffness)
Cover on top to shield hardware from all weather
made using fiberglass according to one of the members
performed FEA by hand to calculate failure stresses lol
Did vacuum bagging on every layup part - remove excess resin from the part
Cabin is easy to attach to the drone (I think it slides in and is then bolted), but made from wood and lexan polycarbonate
After initial crash → Angled landing gear was wobbly, used laser cut wood and acrylic as brackets to connect the main frame and landing legs
went for the same landing gear failure mode as us. Fracture at the cheap joint to protect more expensive part
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UBC Okanagan
Helicopter
Didn’t fly at comp as they crashed two days before during a test flight
Carbon fiber shell
Mold made out of MDF wood, sanded down to 220 grit and sealed
Wet layup, then vacuum bagged to get excess resin (one member wanted to vacuum infuse but wasn’t there. still turned out very nice)
Painted then applied a layer of clear coat and finally polished.
2 component clear coat (need heavy filters for this)
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ETS
Showed up with a quad
Mostly off the shelf components
Flights were not very successful
Large footprint overall
Upside down props as well as large props
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Sherbrooke
VTOL
Foam wings, removeable after the motors
Very large and heavy
Used foam board and bent it around ribs using an iron? (can’t remember what they used to soften it in order to shape it)
Flew as a quad for task one, but flipped close to Bravo
Landed in task 2 at LZ B
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Guelph
Considering it was the team’s first year competing at AEAC they had a really cool fixed wing design
Mostly made of foam, C.F. tubes and aluminum
the design had 1 propeller behind the fuselage
flew well
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Pegasus
No landing gear fracture (we had frequent landing gear cracks on multiple flight-tests leading to comp.)
Airframe was light, ~ 9.5 kg. We will shoot for less next year with the new Pegasus 2 airframe
No aerodynamic waterproofing, additionally, wires and PCBs on top probably reduces efficiency
Wires for batteries were excessively long, this will be something EE will work on this year
Cabin performed well, did not fall out of the sky. Thinking of remaking the cabin to be more aerodynamic by using proper molds to create curved profiles
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Updates
Item | Presenter | Notes |
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Flight tests | @Smile Khatri |
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AEAC 2025 | Â |
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Fixed wing program coming soon! | @Alison Thompson |
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Resources | @Smile Khatri | |
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