Design! Build! Fly

UCF PLACES FIRST IN NATION, SECOND IN WORLD AT AIAA STUDENT COMPETITION

Written by Marisa Ramiccio and Kimberly J. Lewis for UCF Today.

A team of eight University of Central Florida aerospace engineeringstudents designed, built and flew the best remote-controlled aircraft in the United States in an international competition sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Besting 90 teams that made it to the final round of AIAA’s 2021 Design Build Fly competition, UCF’s aircraft achieved a virtual tie with the winning team from Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering in India, which was given a tie-breaking advantage by contest judges, according to AIAA.

Teammates David Silva-Melendez ’21, Harshavardhan Bangaru ’21, Jack Faysash ’21, Dillon Graves ’21, Mariangelo La Rosa ’21, Kyle Ramos ’21, Andrew Schroeder ’21 and Devin Unterreiner ’21, who all received aerospace engineering degrees earlier this year, spent their senior year designing, building, testing and flying the aircraft they nicknamed The Knightmobile.

The competition entry also served as the team’s senior design capstone project, a requirement for graduation from the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science.

AIAA’s Design Build Fly competition provides university students with hands-on aerospace engineering experience and a way to test their skills against teams from around the world. Teams were challenged to create aircrafts with a deployable surveillance subsystem. Because of the pandemic, teams were asked to submit detailed reports as well as videos of their projects in place of an in-person event.

Against the 90 other finalists, including schools like Embry-Riddle University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, UCF’s team successfully performed four different missions that tested the aircraft’s ability to take off, fly, remain aerodynamically stable, perform surveillance, deliver a payload and land flawlessly.

This year marks the best result in UCF’s 10-year history competing in AIAA’s Design Build Fly.

“From the get-go, we set a winning mentality to place first in the competition,” says team leader Silva-Melendez. “We gave everyone a role to do and attacked the design problem with a divide and conquer mentality. With the pandemic, this year’s competition proved to be extra challenging in terms of communication, manufacturing, pace of work and teamwork.”

As with any engineering project built from the ground up, UCF’s team overcame some obstacles including early flight stability challenges and, later, testing failures with the payload.

“We relied on our determination to win, and our engineering principles to eventually make the system work within the aircraft,” says SilvaMelendez.

work within the aircraft,” says Silva Melendez.

Despite the social-distancing constraints and strict competition deadlines, the team collectively spent more than 50 hours a week to bring the project to fruition, which included weekly remote team meetings, testing the aircraft and all of its components on a weekly basis, and performing test flights in an Apopka airfield for remote-controlled planes.

Silva-Melendez credits the win to team advisor George Loubimov of UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and to UCF’s AIAA student chapter for provided funding, materials and historical contest knowledge.

“The fact that it was part of an academic capstone project significantly raised the workload for the team,” says Loubimov. “It also created human resource limitations, compared to other teams competing,” noting that many aircrafts from other universities were built by student clubs. UCF’s senior design academic requirement meant that no more than eight people could be on the team.

This isn’t the first accolade UCF’s Design Build Fly team has received. Their project was named the best from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s Senior Design Showcase on April 23.

Four members of the team have already landed engineering jobs.

AIAA celebrated the 25th anniversary of Design Build Fly this year.

To view a video of a Knightmobile test run, visit our YouTube channel: bit.ly/YouTubeMAE.

MAE Students Win Top Awards at AIAA Regional Conference

Written by Marisa Ramiccio

UCF mechanical and aerospace engineering students are flying high after attending the AIAA Region II Student Conference, which allows graduate and undergraduate students to compete in oral and technical paper competitions. MAE claimed a total of three awards, including both first and second place in the Undergraduate category. The winners are Drew Vigne, B.S.ME; and Vanessa D’Esposito, B.S.AE.

As the first place winner, Vigne will receive $500 and the opportunity to attend and present his paper at the AIAA SciTech Forum, which will take place in January 2022. His paper will also be published in the SciTech Forum proceedings.

A group of MAE students also took second place in the Teams category as well as a $300 prize. The team included Celeste Newman, B.S.AE; Hunter Quebedeaux, B.S.ME; and Ryan Ketzner, B.S.AE for their paper, “Dynamics of a 9-DOF Heterogeneous Robotic Platform for Spacecraft Motion Emulation.”

This year’s conference was held virtually via Microsoft Teams and hosted by the student branch at the University of Alabama. It was also the first time in five years that MAE students have participated in the event.

“In this untraditional year, the AIAA Regional Student Conferences continued to support students with practical experience and feedback from professionals in the aerospace field,” said Dan Dumbacher, the AIAA executive director, in a release. “We look forward to seeing what these students will do in the future!”

AIAA hosts six student conferences, one for each of its regions. Region II, which UCF competed in, encompasses the southeastern states including Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.