Senior Capstone project

Brit1275

Brit1275

Active member
For those of you who are interested, here's a few pictures of my senior capstone design project.

It is a supersonic business jet, cruises at mach 1.8 with a range of 4500 nautical miles, and carries 12 passengers. It is powered by 3 turbofan engines (2 on bottom, and one on top). It is designed to have a low sonic-boom signature, so that supersonic flight over land is possible (currently it is not allowed in the US)

We are building a dynamically scaled UAV to test low speed flight characteristics (i.e. take off and landing) and to explore non-linear lift. The UAV is all kevlar, has a 4.5ft wingspan and is 9 feet long. Powered by a single electric ducted fan pumping out 18 lbs of static thrust. The weight of the entire airplane is only about 23 lbs with everything in it, most of that is battery weight.

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And just to give you an idea of the scope of this project, the wind tunnel model you see in those pictures is worth over $70,000, probably more near $100,000. The actual UAV has a couple grand worth of materials in it as well, and the propulsion system alone cost us $3500.

There are 27 of us working on this project, we hope to be flying by the beginning of June. I will post some more pictures later.
 
i like how they're all serious and scott is trying to look tough, but then you have this aukward smile thing goin on.
 
and by wierd you mean the sexiest plane ever, right?

Every body wish me luck tomorrow, I have my interview with boeing to be a flight test engineer!!!
 
We will be flying the plane at NAS Whidbey. Aparently there is an unused airstrip out there that jet RC modelers use. We have to fly it somewhere like that because of its size and speed (top speed of about 140 mph)
 
Just make sure the radio works, my friend just had his short out on his RC mid-flight at Discovery park and he hasnt recovered the wing assembly yet. Luckily the engine is mostly preserved. But that looks sick!
 
I'm thinking its more GI Joe scale... in fact, we joked about cutting windows and putting a bunch of GI Joe's inside, but we'd lose a lot of vital structure by doing that, so thats not good.

Finally fired up our motor for the first time, jesus christ. The thing is fucking LOUD, and puts out an INSANE amount of thrust. We're almost positive we are going to have a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than 1 (i.e. we can do vertical climb). This is unballasted weight of course, but still. More thrust than we were expecting, and a MUCH lighter structure than we were expecting.

Also, I'm even closer to getting the coolest job ever, had my phone interview last week, now they want to bring me in for an on-site follow up interview, show me around their facilities, and meet some of the engineers (sounds like I may already have the job).... so thats like fucking.... biggest thing ever.
 
i know, haven't got it yet, but still.

oh, and while we were running the motor today at full throttle (=18 lbs thrust, 30,000rpm) we ingested a bee. it flew about 6 inches in front of the inlet, then vanished and there was a little "pop" noise and bee goo ALL over the inside of the duct. poor little guy :(
 
Do you fly RC planes around the seattle area?

I'm building a new plane (I'm the guy rowen was talking about) and I need a field that a) is bigger than the magnuson soccer fields, b) doesn't suddenly become covered in high school lacrosse players while my plane is in the air and c) doesn't require an AMA license or whatever.

Do you know of anywhere? Big parks? Abandoned airstrips?

Sweet plane, by the way... and this might be a stupid question, but why didn't you guys use model turbines instead of the electric? I would imagine you'd need a huge fucking battery to run that ducted fan, and won't you get incredibly short flight times?

Also, just out of curiosity, are you guys planning to give it flaps or flaperons or something along those lines? I guess the wing loading should be pretty low, but it still looks like landing might be trouble, especially if it's so light.
 
Yes, the wings have flaperons, and also leading edge flaps.

We originally were going to go with a gas turbine, but a)you need a jet certified pilot to fly it and b) if you crash its a big fireball.

The electric system cost just as much as a gas turbine, but puts out just as much thrust, is easier to run/maintain, and the weight is kept constant (no fuel loss). The batteries are quite heavy, but they are lithium polymers, so lighter than NiCd. Gotta be careful that we don't draw too much current though, or those will catch on fire.

As far as fields, I have no idea. How big is the plane? Why don't you get an AMA license? Then you can fly at Marymoor, which is a GREAT field. Unless you're just flying tiny electric park flyers, I would recommend getting an AMA card and going to an actual RC field.
 
The leading edge flaps are going to be fixed, we don't want to mess about with having them adjustable, we've got enough troubles to deal with, so they're just going to be drooped to the trim configuration we got from the wind tunnel testing.

we are doing our dynamic thrust testing today in the wind tunnel, we have the motor mounted in the the wind tunnel model, its fucking amazing.
 
Grant and Christine showed a little interest, so I thought I'd just post it up here. If anybody is interested the final presentation is next Monday afternoon/evening. As far as I know it is open to the public, it will be in Condon Hall in the U-District. It will be long-ish (anywhere from 2-5 hours, probably more like 3) and pretty technical, but SUPER fucking interesting.

If you want any details, just drop me a message and I can give you exact location and time, etc. I wouldn't show up in grubbies, but you certainly don't have to wear a suit. Just, you know, nice-ish looking.
 
what I got from that was "it's going to be long and you won't understand it but if you wanna be confused for hours on end, you should come."
 
You all missed a good one, it ended up only being about 1.5 hours, so it wasn't bad at all. We got crazy praise from some super upper level guys at Boeing, they said this is by FAR the best work they've ever seen from ANY undergraduate group, and probably any university in general. yeah, we fucking rock.

I'll post some pictures of the actual plane at some point. it's cool. We fly monday!
 
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