2020 Western Aero Design

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Beavertail
Posts: 217
Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2010 8:30 pm
Location: Bedford ns

2020 Western Aero Design

Unread post by Beavertail » Sun Sep 29, 2019 2:28 pm

Hello all,
Need to pick some of y'alls knowledge base abit for my design project this year!

A little background:
Yes once again the 2020 Western Aero design has started and this year it is MY personal beloved baby this year for the first time.In previous years I have been a member helping where I can with design work, however never fully ran the project from beginning to end. This year, it is my final year design project and I will be leading the wing design. We got our wing design calculations mostly complete and the platform shape solidified. Without going into too many details (as this is the internet I don't want to release too much) we will be continuing with the same airfoil as it worked very very well last year! SAE Aero Design decided this year to REDUCE the wingspan even more at 11 feet from the previous 12 feet also keeping the 750W limit, thus, the wing had to be completely overhauled. We challenged ourselves to lower the weight and increase our cruising airspeed this year to minimize the overall planform area and increase aspect ratio resulting in (hopefully) a more efficient wing compared to last year's design.

Which leads me to my question for you experience builders :)

We have just started CAD for the wing and we are considering the rib design. Last year through the span they had 30 ribs spaced at 118mm apart. Now this year, following the lightening goal, we are debating between 22 ribs spaced at 189mm and 24 ribs spaced at 128mm. My concern with the 22 ribs is monokote, we will have have strips of balsa running the span to support the monokote, but I am still concerned with the distance and the monokote sagging. So my question is is it worth the weight savings of two ribs with the large gap? or would you all foresee issues in manufacturing of the wing?

Attached is a screenshot of the current design as well as the previous design for reference. Note that the design is not complete and will have a similar foam core for the trailing edge similar to last years wing, also ailerons have not been added yet.

Thanks All!
Gary
Attachments
2020 Wing Concept, Note 22 ribs on the  right and 24 on the left
2020 Wing Concept, Note 22 ribs on the right and 24 on the left
2019 Wing Design
2019 Wing Design
beavertail (gary :P)

Beavertail
Posts: 217
Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2010 8:30 pm
Location: Bedford ns

Re: 2020 Western Aero Design

Unread post by Beavertail » Mon Jan 06, 2020 7:01 pm

Hello All!
Was great seeing a few of y'all last weekend at the field! Been a while since I visited.

However! ALOT of work has been done on my design project this year for the SAE Aero Design Competition which is FAST approaching! Ive attached the THREE (ish four) very long reports my group has written over the last few months outlining the design processes.

First Interim Report is a simple background research, rather uneventful and mostly information for the Prof and supervisors of the project (will be boring for most people here to read as y'all would know all of it already!)

Second Interim Report is the concept selection of the aircraft. Decision matrices and explanations as to which of the concepts generated in the first report were chosen for the final design of the aircraft.

Third Interim Report, this is the real and true goodies of the process! All of the preliminary and most of the detailed design notes of the aircraft. Lots of emphasis was placed on the composite spar design as well as building upon the fuse structural design from last years design. The Spar was completely redesigned from last years design. The spar this year is based on a composite I beam design with unidirectional carbon on top and bottom and a fibreglass shear web in the vertical section. Ive also attached another document done specifically on the design on the first iteration of our spar this year. We did redo the factor of safety calculations based on weight per unit area instead of layer thickness shown in the document, however the idea is similar and values changed slightly.

Hope you all will enjoy reading these! The third interim report and composite manufacturing document will probably interest most of you the most so feel free to skip the first two!

Let me know if anyone has questions! Id be happy to answer them!

Gary
Attachments
Western Aero Design Team - Wing Spar Specification Analysis R1 - 12-11-2019.pdf
Spar Design Report
(335.09 KiB) Downloaded 48 times
Interim Report 3 - SAE Aero.pdf
Third Interim Report
(1.73 MiB) Downloaded 57 times
Interim Report 2 - SAE Aero (1).pdf
Second Interim Report
(1.42 MiB) Downloaded 59 times
Group 25 - Interim Report 1 - SAE Aero.pdf
First Interim Report
(1.45 MiB) Downloaded 58 times
beavertail (gary :P)

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