Eaglenautics: Sae Aero West Design Competition Team

Eaglenautics is an engineering club affiliated with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Every year, Eaglenautics participates in the SAE Aero West Design Competition. This competition challenges teams to design a competitive R/C scale aircraft from the ground up. Eaglenautics tackles this challenge by using a modified design-build-fly (DBF) process by adding a simulation step after the design step. Simulation software allows for a faster convergence to a design before the build process starts. Eaglenautics utilizes simulation programs like XFLR5 and OpenVSP to aid with the design of the aircraft to save time building multiple aircraft iterations. This process is especially helpful for Eaglenautics because of the size and complexity of the aircrafts. The competition requires teams to design a heavy lift aircraft that must carry steel plates and a minimum of one soccer ball. Due to these competition requirements, this year’s aircraft has a 6.8 ft wingspan and a length of about 6.4 ft. The gross take-off weight of the aircraft will be about 30-32 lbf. The process that Eaglenautics follows to design aircraft more closely mimics a typical design process of companies in the Aerospace industry. This in turn provides students with experience that is applicable to Capstone projects and jobs in the Aerospace industry. In the picture is an example of the aircraft’s finale iteration of the wing and vertical and horizontal stabilizers in XFLR5. An XFLR5 simulation was performed that showed the streamlines of the air leaving the wing and control surfaces