OSU students again rules the skies, three-peat as international aerospace champs

Members of OSU’s aerospace engineering student design teams, their faculty advisers and pilot gather for a group photo with their winning crafts upon returning from the AIAA International Design/Build/Fly Competition in Wichita. In capturing first- and second places out of 48 teams representing top schools in North America and Europe, the OSU-Black team and OSU-Orange team extended the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering’s dominant streak in the contest to three consecutive years.

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STILLWATER, OKLA. –The preparation of engineers at OSU to push the boundaries of modern aerospace innovation is unsurpassed in the world, if the results of the nation’s largest aerospace engineering student design competition are any indication. Independent teams representing OSU’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering placed first and second for the third consecutive year in the annual AIAA International Student Design/Build/Fly Competition. Sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Office of Naval Research and Cessna, this year’s contest at Cessna’s airfield in Wichita April 22-23 featured 48 university teams from North America and Europe.  

Participating in the competition for nine of its 10 years, OSU teams placed first and third in 2001 and, in 2004, became the first from the same university to take both of the top spots. OSU mechanical and aerospace engineering students also took first and second in 2005.

“Simultaneously taking first and second in this contest is an accomplishment no other university can claim, and OSU has now done it three years in a row,” said Dr. Andy Arena, Maciula Professor of engineering at OSU and the teams’ faculty adviser. “I am so proud of our students, especially considering the level of competition. This year it only got harder.”

“The nation’s top aerospace programs – MIT, Embry-Riddle, Cal-Poly, USC, Purdue, Rensselaer Polytechnic, the U.S. Military Academy, Notre Dame – participate in the competition, and some, like us, send multiple teams, but our students keep winning it,” Arena said.  

The contest requires students to design and fabricate an unmanned, electric-powered, radio-controlled aircraft to accomplish specified flight mission objectives and then demonstrate its capabilities. The mission challenges change each year, but the goal remains a design that balances quality handling with high performance and may be manufactured practically and affordably.

For this year’s competition, teams could accumulate points by successfully completing two of three different mission profiles. The first-place OSU-Black team and second-place OSU-Orange team designed their planes for a timed, cargo flexibility mission – in which the aircrafts had to fly multiple sorties carrying payloads, alternatively, of filled two-liter bottles, 48 tennis balls and a 2 ft. length of wood. Both teams also completed the RAC (rated aircraft cost) mission in which the planes had to carry 96 tennis balls over two minutes. Scores were assessed based on equations that considered flight and cargo load/unload times, mission difficulty and weight of the unloaded aircraft versus weight of cargo.

“The first thing we did was an analysis of the missions to determine which two were the most accommodating for achieving maximum score and building a lightweight airplane, and then we spent an entire semester of work designing and constructing the aircraft,” said Karalyn Eyster, aerospace engineering senior and chief engineer of team OSU-Orange. “The cargo flexibility mission had a difficulty factor of 10 and involved fastest loading and unloading times, and the way we designed our planes centered entirely on loading and unloading efficiency.

“Both teams designed planes for top-loading, and OSU-Black had a loading time of 45 seconds, and we had a loading time of 44 seconds,” said Eyster, who has accepted employment with the federal government as an aerospace weapons analyst.

The RAC mission score was determined by dividing a difficulty factor of 150 by the weight of the unloaded aircraft. According to Erik Wilhelm, chief engineer the OSU-Black team, both squads supremely applied ingenuity in designing light and aerodynamic planes that also had fuselages capable of handling the cargo of tennis balls. OSU-Black’s aircraft, “Black Lightning,” was the lightest plane in the competition, tipping the scales at just 4.75 pounds. The OSU-Orange team’s entry, “Flying Slug,” was a distant second at 5.1 pounds.

“We broke a couple of records this year, becoming the first team in the history of the competition to win with the lowest RAC,” said Wilhelm, a mechanical and aerospace engineering senior who is going to work for L-3 Communications. “Our plane has an 88-inch wingspan so we thought it was pretty big and had no idea how small it actually was until we got to Wichita.”

“The fact that weight was such a big scoring marker, we knew we were going to do well,” Wilhelm said. “The aerodynamics, propulsion and structures team leads did a great job and many others on our team were really, really dedicated.”

OSU’s entries were completed as semester-long projects in the aerospace engineering capstone design course with the 20-member teams logging approximately 12,000 man-hours. In addition to entering the lightest planes in the competition, OSU teams recorded the top technical report scores and fastest cargo loading and unloading times. In successfully completing the missions, both planes carried payloads almost twice their weight, a structural efficiency feat at any level of design.

Eyster attributed OSU’s dominance in the competition to exceptional instruction in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and an engineering undergraduate facility unlike any other in the state. Established in 2000 with amenities such as a wind tunnel and fiberglass composites fabrication lab, the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology’s Design and Manufacturing Laboratory exists for undergraduate engineering students to design, build and test their innovations.

“We have an excellent adviser in Dr. Arena who guides us along the way but lets us do our own thing,” Eyster said. “At the DML, we have a facility that allows us to do all the design and construction, and that’s a huge advantage other schools don’t have.”

“Through the years, we have improved our strategy and, keeping our trade and design secrets in house, set a precedent of excellence,” she said. “Each successive team knows they don’t want to let the program down and that’s a real drive to succeed.”

Eyster also acknowledged pilot Dan Bierly and support from The Charles Machine Works Inc. that since 1998 has sponsored OSU’s teams by providing use of its Perry airfield for prototype flight testing. Additional sponsors of OSU’s teams this year included Ray Booker, Lockheed Martin, Nordam, Environ, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, L3 Communications, Frontier Engineering, R.G. and Nancy Rumbaugh, Mark and Ann McWatters, Garry and Melanie Gilmore, Tom and Gena Christensen, Adam and Kassie Gilmore and Jaria Gilmore.

Most students have secured employment prior to the contest, but their winning streak only enhances the reputation of OSU’s aerospace program, according to Arena.

“In addition to those headed to graduate school, students from this year’s class are going to work all over the country for companies such as American Airlines, Nordam, L3, Lockheed Martin, Baker Hughes, the Central Intelligence Agency, Raytheon and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, to name a few,” Arena said. “I think OSU engineering graduates have always been well regarded by employers, but our students’ performance in the competition reinforces that and provides some added visibility for them.

“On more than one occasion I have witnessed company recruiters seek out our students at the contest, and a few companies have also become OSU team sponsors.”

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In between sorties, members of second-place team OSU-Orange change payloads as part of a timed flight mission to carry, alternatively, two, two-liter bottles of liquid, 48 tennis balls and a length of wood at the 2006 AIAA International Design/Build/Fly Competition in Wichita. Students from OSU’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering took first and second place in the competition for the third straight year. (Photo courtesy of Terrabreak.com)

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