The Oklahoma Christian University SAE Aero Design team is preparing for competition against some of the top Aero Design programs in the world.
The team, consisting of seven senior mechanical engineering students, has constructed a successful prototype of a 7-foot long plane capable of carrying a maximum payload of 55 pounds. They will fly the plane at the SAE Aero Design East event in Fort Worth, TX in March.
With the foundational design in place, the team is now focused on maximizing space in the plane’s fuselage to store more tennis balls, which are counted as passengers and luggage at competition.
The plane carried 60 tennis balls during its last test flight, a number the team hopes to raise to 69 by competition day, team member Ben Bray said.
“The scoring is primarily a function of how many tennis balls you can carry as passengers,” team member Josh Nelson said. “For each passenger tennis ball, you also carry between half a pound and three quarters of a pound representing their luggage, and you’re also scored on how much luggage your plane can carry. The most efficient way we’ve found to do things is to carry the minimum amount of luggage for each passenger and carry more passengers.”
According the Nelson, the plane will fly a set route five to seven times over a two-day span, being judged on how their plane flies with a heavy payload and endures multiple takeoffs and landings.
Among those competing include NCAA Division I schools like Texas A&M University and the University of Cincinnati, as well as top international teams from across the globe, team member Sean Kneuper said.
“Brazil actually has a national competition beforehand, and their top two competitors from that competition end up going to this international competition in the states,” Kneuper said. “Then we also have competitors like the Polish Air Force Academy and two state universities from China.”
While other universities have more manpower and funding at their disposal, Oklahoma Christian has traditionally been competitive at the competition because its students work harder, Kneuper said.
“One of the things that sets this apart from other systems projects, like Baja and Formula, is because our materials are well accessible and pretty cheap comparatively, a lot of effort goes into just the design work and the time spent optimizing things,” Kneuper said. “You can have a small team that doesn’t have as large of a budget as a D1 school like Texas A&M, and we can compete against them effectively because we can put time and effort into optimizing our designs.”
In addition to creating the plane itself, the team must also draft a technical report and present the plane to a panel of judges. According to team member Burgon Peterson, taking enough time to prepare the presentation is important when competing against larger schools.
“You’re scored in three ways—how you fly, your technical report about the plane and your presentation of the plane to the judges,” Peterson said. “So, we’ve completed one phase of how we’re scored. We still have to go over how we’re going to write a technical report, which is what we’re going over now, then presenting that technical report. Most of the focus from here on out is more so prepping for judging and testing the plane for flights rather than making it fly a lot better.”
Nelson said the project has already caught the attention of employers such as Tinker Air Force Base, who believe the skills learned making a miniature plane can carry over to larger aircrafts.
“There are a lot of recruiters, who I know we’ve all talked to individually, that are very interested in what we’re doing with this project,” Nelson said. “With our knowledge of the engineering method, as well as us being familiar with the aerodynamic side of things, there’s a lot of this that is transferable in the workforce, and recruiters are always happy to talk to us about that and see what we’ve learned.”
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