After some set backs we still got the glider to go 81 feet.
Glider Design
The fuselage length was 60 cm. The wing span was 42 cm and the horizontal stabilizer span was 25 cm. The vertical stabilizer was 12.4 cm tall. The AERY Evaluation Number that we received was 113.
Benefits of Computer Based Models
The benefits of using a computer based modeling is that you can edit it very easily by just changing the numbers. The AERY software would tell us if the plane would fly or not. If you were going to compute the same information, you would need to find the center of balance, the weight to see how if it could fly. It would take a lot more time doing the work by hand.
Glider Build Picture
Glider Construction
It was pretty simple to follow how to build the glider based on the design, but when we made our wings and stabilizers, we needed to use some trig skills to find the angles.
Flight Data
Conclusion Questions
Explain which glider or aircraft term were difficult to understand and the correct definition.
Aft-toward the back of a plane.
Explain any challenges if someone else were to construct your design using the AERY print.
The person creating our plane would have to find the angles of the wings and stabilizers.
Explain any challenges faced using the AERY software and how you overcame those challenges.
We just tried to make our plane fly at first and we decided to try to get a high AERY number.
Explain difficulties faced with this second design challenge compared with the first challenge.
With the secound challenge you had to make a canard wing. With the first you just had to make any plane. It was different making a canard plane because the horizontal stabilizer is in front of the wings. The first challenge was difficult because we had to make a random design that could fly.
Explain how these constraints impacted your glider design compared to the first.
In the second challenge we had to make a canard wing plane. The horizontal stabilizer had to be in front of the wings.
Funding for a new project is always limited in some way. How does the proposal process ensure that the idea being proposed will satisfy the project requirements?
When you propose your idea you would show a test of how it works. It should have all the project requirements that the customer wants.
Projects fail not due to a lack of solid designs but instead due to other issues. Describe these issues and explain how the proposal process ensures that the design with the highest likelihood of success can be selected.
If a project doesn't have funding it would fail. If you follow all the requirements your idea could be selected.
Describe the most persuasive elements of your proposal.
The things about our plane that are positive are the long distances it can fly and how straight it can fly.
Explain why someone would have either a positive or negative impression after reading through your proposal for the first time.
The negative things are that AERY number is somewhat low, and the plane is large. The positives are that the plane glides far and that it lands safely.
Was the glider as stable as you expected? Why or why not might this be so?
The plane was stable for the most part. It would move to the right and left sometimes but we ended up fixing the problem.
What techniques did you use to “trim” the glider for straight and gently descending flight?
We sanded the winds curved and we also added weight to the left to balance the plane.
How many test flights were required to get the glider trimmed for long distance, straight-line flight? Was this expected? Why or why not?
We did 25 test flights. In these test flights we fixed the plane according to what direction it was going or the distance. We expected to do several test flights to fix our plane.
Explain the strengths and weaknesses of a competitive trial as a method to identify an optimal design.
The strength of a competitive trial is that it shows how the planes do the task that is needed. The weaknesses are that not all the planes would be as well as other planes but still can do the task well.
Explain differences between your glider’s performance through flight-testing that was unexpected based on the AERY software predicted flight characteristic
We thought the plane would not fly as well because of the lower AERY number the plane ended up flying really well. The farthest it went was 81 feet.
Based on the entire flight test data, from every group, explain conclusion that you can make about optimal glider designs for long distance flight.
The Canard wing works really well on gliders. Also using larger wings help do longer distances.