Date of Award

6-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2024

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Mohammad Ayoubi

Abstract

This thesis explores the experience of a Santa Clara University senior design team that created an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) intended to compete in the ’Design, Build, Fly!’ competition hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The six students worked together to secure funding for the project, formulate a preliminary design, and then manufacture the aircraft. Every step of this process was iterative, allowing the team to learn from their past attempts as the project’s timeline progressed. Upon obtaining competition rules and mission requirements, the team followed a design flow that brought the plane from a sketched design to a fully operable UAV. Determining the desired flight speed and taking into account the competition runway length, the team settled on a SD7062 NACA airfoil. This, along with a 1ft chord length and 5ft wingspan, satisfied the high lift requirement obtained from known competition parameters. Choosing balsa as the primary building materials was fairly straightforward when taking into account the limited budget and plethora of hobby related information available online and in literature. Using a semi-monocoque design, a computer-aided design (CAD) model was created and allowed the team to perform finite-element analysis (FEA) on the structure. FEA simulations validated the team’s design and ensured that the calculations done to determine various sizing requirements of structural members were valid when applying the expected loads. In terms of subsystems, the landing gear was retained from last year’s team which allowed the team to reduce costs. The system’s thrust comes from a 15x6E propeller connected to a 2000W 520Kv brushless DC motor powered by a 22.2V 4,500mAh LiPo battery. Servo motors powered the control surfaces, and these were connected to a different power supply, namely a 5S 6.0V 2,000mAh NiMh battery, as requested by competition requirements. Upon the final manufacturing of the craft, it was able to complete eight successful test flights, however, before the eighth flight, the wing’s leading edge cracked which prevented further flight testing. Due to time constraints, a solution to this problem was not implemented on this plane. Proposals to this solution are going to be shared with next year’s prospective team.

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