Overview

The AeroDesign Team uses a team-written, MATLAB-based tool to size its aircraft. It simulates an aircraft’s mission with takeoff, climb, cruise, and turn models. Every year, the performance lead implements the particular restraints of that year’s competition - perhaps a tricky payload configuration, or a challenging drag component - and sweeps through a few design variables, trying to maximize mission score.

When an aircraft’s geometry is defined, its weight is calculated using the geometric definitions. These models, hereafter weight buildup scripts, have been tuned over the years to accurately capture the team’s construction techniques, material density properties, etc.

One day, the chief engineer and performance lead gave me my first full-sized task at the AeroDesign Team: implement a wiring weight buildup script. The concern was that the wiring weight of our aircraft could be significant, particularly if we featured a long fuselage and/or wingspan, or more than one motors, where the lengths of the thick ESC wires and thinner servo control wires can be significant.

The Work

I recall looking into the corpse of the previous years’ competition aircraft, and taking measurements of its linear dimensions and wiring lengths. The idea was to estimate the wire lengths as fractions of well-defined geometric parameters, such as wingspan, fuselage length, or tail moment arm.

I implemented functionality that allowed the user to specify the gauge of wire used. I also allowed the user to specify the number of motors, and whether they are wing-mounted or elsewhere. All code was written in MATLAB.

My First Presentation

This work also resulted in my first time presenting at a meeting in the AeroDesign Team. I recently managed to find the slides for it, quite nostalgic! My section was under Performance, slides 16-22.