| dc.description.abstract | For my Honors Thesis, I participated in the Aerospace Engineering Capstone senior design project, less formally known as Speedfest. Speedfest is an annual design competition hosted by the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department at Oklahoma State, which occured on April 25th this year. Every year two OSU teams compete, along with any other schools who are interested, in a competition that takes the students through an in-depth and rigorous design project all the way from conceptual design to building and implementation. This year's competition, as always, was a new mission. The aircraft's mission was to carry a payload of a GoPro Hero 3 camera mounted to a 1/18th scale or larger remote control off-road car. Upon takeoff, the aircraft carrying the payload was required to fly seven full laps of a pylon course, following which the aircraft must deploy the payload over the grass runway and the car must complete a ground course, either manually or autonomously for a score bonus. During the course of the ground mission, the camera mounted to car must record the contents of a two foot by two foot sign and the contents must be relayed to the judges to successfully receive a score. My role during the project was the aerodynamics sub-team lead for OSU Black Team. The aerodynamics sub-team was responsible for shape and overall design of the aircraft, including detailed analysis of all aspects pertaining to aerodynamics, stability, and control. After completing the conceptual design within the first two and a half weeks of the semester, we had three weeks to do the detailed design and analysis before building began, which meant that the design needed to be sufficient for flight as well as ensuring the successful completion of the mission. For my report, I am uploading the brochure that was also required for the competition, which provides details on the aircraft and payload as well as the team as a whole. | |
