AIAA members learn valuable lessons at 2016 design, build, fly competition
The UB team designed two planes for the competition: a "manufacturing plane" that could fly a lap in five minutes and a "production" plane that could fit inside the manufacturing plane and could also carry a 32 oz Gatorade bottle.
By Jashonda Williams
Published April 25, 2016 This content is archived.
Twelve students from UB’s American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) chapter joined their peers from other universities to test the planes they had designed and built themselves at the 2016 Cessna/Raytheon Missile Systems Student Design/Build/Fly competition.
“What’s fun about these competitions is that there are teams from all over the world. It’s interesting to see how other people approach the same problem,” said Tyler Szczesniak, a mechanical engineering student, team captain, and president of the AIAA student chapter at UB.
Of the 80 teams to participate in the competition, 50 were from the U.S. and the rest came from Austria, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Pakistan, Singapore, Slovenia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom.
Each year, Cessna and Raytheon provide a list of requirements and missions at the end of August for students to begin designing their planes for the next year’s competition.
This year, the competition called for two planes to be built, and three missions to be completed. The students were required to build a manufacturing plan to complete a “fairy mission,” which means that the plane can fly a lap in 5 minutes. The next mission required students to build a production plane that could fit inside the manufacturing plane. Teams were allowed to break down the plane so it could fit inside or complete this task with the plane in one piece. The third mission was that the production plane must be able to carry a 32 oz. Gatorade bottle.
The UB team members spent most of the school year designing and fabricating their airplanes and writing the design report for the competition.
“As captain and President of the club, I delegated the work and managed the projects. My co-captain and I ended up creating different groups to work on each part of the plane, and then we all came together to make a cohesive design,” said Szczesniak.
It cost the team about $250 per plane, using balsa, carbon fiber, and microlight plywood to build them. The team placed 45th overall in the flying competition, due to a faulty propeller incident during their flying time. However, they earned tenth place in the report component of the competition, where students walk the judges through their design and thought process put into their planes.
“I’m hoping our team will take what we learned from the other teams and apply those things next year,” says Szczesniak.
The annual competition provides students with a real-world aircraft design experience, giving them the chance to implement and experiment with new ideas. The Applied Aerodynamics, Aircraft Design, Design Engineering, and Flight Test Technical Committees, as well as the AIAA Foundation, sponsor the event. The competition was held in in Wichita, Kansas on April 15-17, 2016.