AIAA DESIGN, BUILD, FLY

My team competed in the Design, Build, Fly competition sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). In this competition we were tasked with the mission of creating a plane that can fly another plane. One plane had to fly around a track with a 2.5 pound payload. However, before that plane was able to fly, the second larger plane had to transport the pieces of that first plane one by one around the very same track. My team was challenged and had to think outside of the box in order to maximize our score in the competition.

As a junior participant in the senior design capstone project, I assisted by helping design, manufacture, and test several prototype tails for both the manufacturing and production plane. I performed calculations of horizontal and vertical volume tail coefficients, as well as its effects on overall center of mass. Furthermore, I supported several of the flight tests in preparation for take off at competition.