Senior Design I

There were 60 students in the class. We offered them a choice of 11 design projects. The students selected their top three choices and there was enough interest in 7 of the 11 offerings to go forward. The other 4 offerings did not have enough people interested to reach critical mass so they were dropped. The surviving projects (in no special order) were:
Perpetual Heavier than Air – Lockheed Martin Sponsored
The goal of this design is a heavier than air UAV powered by solar energy (solar cells) which can stay aloft indefinitely recharging its batteries every day with sufficient energy to stay aloft over night. The vehicle must be capable of carrying a useful payload (camera or communications gear). The team’s job was to conduct a feasibility study to see if a totally autonomous airplane can be designed to fly without a human “expert” pilot to exploit thermal updrafts.
In the spring, the team fabricated a “proof of concept” plane and tested it. Lockheed Martin provided consulting help and flight hardware for the proof of concept test in the spring of 2006.
Perpetual Lighter than Air
The goal of this design is a lighter than air (i.e. airship) UAV powered by solar energy (solar cells) which can stay aloft indefinitely recharging its batteries every day with sufficient energy to stay aloft over night.
This team fitted a gondola to this blimp with three propellers and a video camera. They demonstrated controlled flight in the gymnasium in the ROTC building. They also demonstrated they could take and stream back live video images from the gondola to a laptop screen using radio frequency communication. This was a joint Aero and Electrical Engineering senior design project.
Scramjet Missile – Alliant Techsystems (ATK) Sponsored
In this project, the team designed a hypersonic missile system to cruse at over Mach 5 covering over 300 miles in under 3 minutes. The students designed the missile, including engine flowpath, fuel system sizing, warhead selection, aerodynamic performance, structural analysis, and subsystem packaging. In addition, the team selected an appropriate booster for the missile and analyzed the trajectory flown by this vehicle. GASL (wholly owned subsidiary of ATK) supported this project with expert consulting and coaching. The GASL sponsor for this project put together the X43A (world-record holder hypersonic vehicle) and are part of the FALCON program. Dr. Candler in our department also worked with the team. This was a very difficult analytical design effort that was a huge learning experience for the team. They did well. The opportunity to work with pioneering members of the hypersonics community was priceless for the students.
Homebuilt – Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) Class Plane
This was not a sponsored project. A small team designed a single place LSA plane to FAA regulations, analyzed it in the AAA software design tool (DARcorporation commercial program based on the work of Roscam). Then they built and tested a wind tunnel model, and made a scratch build RC model for flight test in the spring.
The flight test for this plane was conducted at the TriValley RC plane club field in Rosemont. The plane the students built was tail-heavy and the pilot (to the left holding transmitter) was barely able to land it safely. Then the experienced RC plane builders from TriValley helped the students add lead shot ballast to the nose of the plane and made a second flight. On the second flight, it performed beautifully with aileron rolls and many passes over the field. It passed a stall recovery test and the pilot said it had good flying qualities.
Sky Spirit – Lockheed Martin UAV project
The Lockheed Martin Corporation, based in Eagan, Minn., supported this design class project to characterize the aerodynamic performance of the Sky Spirit UAV they have developed. The primary mission of this airplane is to fly a surveillance camera. Smooth flight under wind gust disturbance is a primary concern for this design. The goal of this work is to tune the autopilot to provide smoother flight.
This airplane has two versions, the baseline and Extended Range (ER) version. The end product of this project is a set of autopilot gains for both versions of this airplane, which will insure smooth controlled flight under autopilot control. These gains will be determined by simulation methods. This effort is primarily analytical in nature, but it uses real flight test data, and culminates in a flight of the Sky Spirit using the gains selected by the student team. This team built and tested a wind tunnel model and participated in flight tests of the UAV.
Large Commercial Jet Transport Design – Boeing Sponsored
This is an analytic design trade of study starting with mission requirements supplied by Boeing. A dedicated air freighter airplane (DAF) designed exclusively as a freighter has never been done (designed and put into service) by any airplane company. Freighter planes have in the past always been derived from passenger planes, modified for freighter service. This compromises the design for its freighter role. In this design study the team had to understand the unique requirements of the air freight business and design a complete system to address that market. The team addressed issues put forth to them by Boeing and produced a credible CDR attended by Hammer and Boeing. Boeing had high praise for the results and two of the students on the team are now employed at Boeing.
Engine Test Stand – Legacy Lockheed Martin Sponsored Project
This project continued the engine test stand built and tested (unsuccessfully) in spring 2005. At the start of the project mechanical structure was built, load cells were installed, but the mechanical structure was unreliable. The instrumentation system developed the previous year left much to be desired.
To correct all these design flaws we formed up a joint Aero and EE team. This team refined the mechanical design, the electronic design and interface software. Lockheed loaned us superb computer hardware and instrumentation electronics to put the system together. The students learned to overcome mechanical, electrical and real time software measurement problems making this system work.
Kinetic Energy UAV – Two Teams
The mission of this UAV is surveillance over nearby hills, obstructions or in dense urban environments. The user is a team of Special Forces soldiers scouting for enemy forces of much greater strength. Two teams signed up for this project and did the project as a design competition. The winning team got to build and flight test the device in the spring of 2006. It flew successfully and landed three times in a very short time with no repairs.
Jeff Hammer