Date

May 29, 2024

Attendance

Team Announcements

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

Open

• 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

Open

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)

UBC Aero

• 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

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

UofT

• 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

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)

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

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

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

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

Updates

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