UCLA Engineering: UCLA Engineer Fall 2002

SAE Competition Challenges Students' Ingenuity

Earlier this year, a team of aerospace, mechanical, and electrical engineering students directed a remote-piloted plane project from inception to flight for UCLA's first entry in the Aero Design West competition.

Members of UCLA's SAE team with their plane at the Aero Design West competition.

"We hardly knew what the basic components - like the fuselage, airfoil, tail boom - of an aircraft were," explains team leader Peter Jeziorek. "That did not stop us, though. We completed designs, raised money for the project, manufactured the plane, put together the reports and a presentation, and flew it at the competition."

Seven members of the student chapter of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) designed and built UCLA's entry for Aero Design West. Held in Lancaster, California in early June, the Aero Design West competition - sponsored by Lockheed Martin and SAE - challenges engineering students to conceive, design, fabricate, and test a remote-piloted aircraft.

UCLA's team, the Flying Bears, finished 24th out of 42 entries by lifting a payload of 8.1 pounds in a 12-pound plane. Their plane weighed about seven pounds more than other competing planes, limiting the amount of weight it was able to carry.

"We have a lot of new ideas for next year, and we plan to create a design that will be competitive with other teams, lifting between 16-20 pounds," comments Jeziorek. He, along with Edmond Chiu, Joshua Levine, Steven Lin, Greg Mumenthaler, and Joshua Torgerson will have the opportunity to integrate design concepts and manufacturing processes they observed at the competition. (All of this year's team except for graduating senior Nick Miura will be returning next year.)

There was a strong head/cross wind at Lancaster that the team had not anticipated that "made it easier to lift off with more weight, but also more difficult to maneuver in the air. It gave us the extra lift we needed to carry about 10.4 lbs, but then we couldn't get enough altitude to turn and landed in a small dirt ditch to the side of the airfield," says Jeziorek.

The team tested their plane at El Toro Airfield in Irvine twice prior to competition, and was able to improve the plane's performance after each run.

They also encountered a number of manufacturing challenges, in large part because it was their first time building many of the plane parts. In one instance, location constraints left them unable to complete vacuum bagging the carbon fiber on the wing, leaving wrinkles and bumps that increased the drag.

The team received $600 in support from the Engineering Alumni Fund for Student Projects and $200 from Northrop Grumman.

Pictures from the competition are available online at http://www.kojimaworks.com/uclasae/aerodesign2002/images.htm.

Images appear courtesy of the UCLA SAE team