Students started the week by designing their aircraft on Onshape, a CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software. This important step allows them to plan the construction of their first motorized aircraft. Below is Team 2’s design. We sought a rather unorthodox aircraft that would have sharp looks combined with solid performance.
Testing Designs in SolidWorks
Although designing an aircraft in a CAD software is important for planning, it also allows students to test their design in more advanced software like SolidWorks. By using SolidWorks students are able to view how air flows over their aircraft’s components. This is a critical step as it allows designers to determine whether their design is aerodynamic enough for flight.
Aerodynamic Analysis Results
In the simulation above, the warmer the color the higher the air velocity is. Diving deeper into the image, we can see that above the wing the air is traveling the fastest as it is red, and below the wing, it is traveling slightly slower than above since the air is orange. Our wing is quite efficient as the pressure under the wing is greater than the pressure over the wing, forcing our wing up, due to the imbalance of pressure. This checks out with Bernoulli’s principle since the faster the airspeed the lower the pressure, a principle I later tested in my wind tunnel, and vice versa.
Similarly, in this image, the warmer the color blob, the higher the airspeed. As we can see the air velocity remains quite high around our aircraft, however, there are small patches of light green. The light green patches mean the air velocity is relatively slow in those specific areas. This is to be expected with all aircraft as the downside to lift is drag. The good news is that the airspeed never drops too low, meaning our aircraft is quite streamlined and has quite good aerodynamics.
More about my UCLA E96A experience:
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