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High-Flying Engineers The USC engineering team is known as one of the toughest competitors in the international Design/Build/Fly competition of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). In the last six years, USC has finished first (1998), second (2002), third (1999), and fourth (2003). “Design/Build/Fly,” supported by Cessna and the Office of Naval Research, is intended to promote aerospace engineering and aircraft development in undergraduate educational programs. The program has worked well for both the School and the program’s sponsors. Engineering students are in danger of spending so much time solving problems in class and fulfilling mandatory requirements that they can miss learning The members of the USC team who made the trip to the competition in Maryland about the real joys that an engineering career offers. The last April pose with their aircraft. Kneeling in front of plane from left to right are AIAA contest shows them a side of engineering that closely Jerry Chen, Billy Kaplan, Cristina Nichitean, George Sechrist, Wyatt Sadler(pilot) resembles what real working engineers do. Working in teams, and Mark Page (industrial advisor). Kneeling behind the plane are: Jeremy Milne the student engineers do exactly what the name of the contest implies. They design an aircraft, build their design and compete and Andres Figueroa. Standing from left to right: Stephan deMartimprey, Tasha against other schools. Drew, Nathan Palmer(partially hidden), Stephanie Hunt, Stephane Gallet, “Our team is composed primarily of undergraduate Shannon Moriarity, Tim Schoen, Jason Randy, Tyler Golightly, Michael Mace, engineering students, but other USC students majoring in Jennifer Tsakoumakis, Jake Evert, Lester Kang, and Tai Merzel. biology, business and other disciplines have also participated,” aircraft, greatly increasing its drag. The plane needed to complete four says Ron Blackwelder, professor of the aerospace and mechanical continuous laps for the mission so it had a high difficulty factor. engineering, who advises the students. He is assisted by two industry All of the aircraft are powered by electric motors with batteries advisors, Mark Page of Swift Engineering and Wyatt Sadler of and there is no limit on the number of motors that they can have. AeroVironment Corp. “The only requirements are an interest in However, the total weight of the batteries is limited to five pounds. aircraft, a desire to design and build and a love of competition.” This requirement, paired with the short stretch allowed for take-off, The School’s team begins designing the competition plane during makes energy management an extremely important consideration. the fall semester. Freshman and sophomores receive lectures to To save weight and increase performance, the students use composite familiarize them with basic aerodynamics during the early part of the materials when they start building the plane in the spring semester semester while the juniors and seniors are busy with the conceptual Groups of two to four students work on separate components and preliminary design. By the end of the semester all students on such as the wings, control surfaces, deployment system, power plant, the team are participating in the design phase. At a preliminary etc. The radio-controlled planes are designed and built for cargo design review, the team presents its ideas to a panel of aeronautical hauling and handling. Small groups test sub-components for the engineers from industry. plane, such as the deployment system. In the fall, the students also practice their in-flight control skills The total score for each team is comprised of the flight with last year’s plane, which also serves as a test bed for new ideas. performance of their best two flights, the score on a written report But every year the rules and test objectives in the contest change, so that every student team has to come up with a completely new design. documenting their aircraft design and selection, and a “Rated Aircraft Cost” representing the complexity and manufacturing costs of their For 2003, the students not only had to create an airplane, but the design. USC’s 2003 plane, named ‘SCyRaider,’ had the fourth best entire plane had to be stored in a box measuring two feet by four feet flying score and the team produced the second best written report. by one foot. In the competition, the team was timed on how rapidly Blackwelder says, “our teams have always been strong. They they could assemble their plane. After passing a rigorous safety inspechave repeatedly defeated other outstanding teams, including those tion, the plane had to complete two of three specified flight missions: from MIT, University of Texas, University of Illinois, UCLA, and the Communications Repeater, Sensor Deployment and Missile Radome military academies.” Decoy. The latter mission required the plane to have a radome (a dome***http://www.aae.uiuc.edu/aiaadbf/ like structure protecting an antenna or other electronics) attached to the
The 2002-03 Team Aerospace Engineers Tim Bentley/Senior (SR) George Cano/SR Jake Evert/Graduate (GR) Andres Figueroa/ Junior (JR) Heidi Fuqua/Freshman (FR) Stephane Gallet/JR
Jackie Gurany/FR Jonathan Hartley/JR Stephanie Hunt/Sophomore (SO) Lester Kang/SR Billy Kaplan/SO John McArthur/SR Tai Merzel/JR Jon Mills/JR Jeremy Milne/FR
Shannon Moriarty/SO Cristina Nichitean/JR Nerses Ohanyan/FR Doris Pease/SR Arvin Shajanian/FR Christopher Shelner/FR Michael Tamashiro/SR P.J. Winter/JR Mechanical Engineers Stephan DeMartimprey/JR
Ray Duran/FR Cory Edwards/JR Tyler Golightly/JR Sergio Ibarra/SO Amanda Lim/JR Michael Mace/JR Dan Montgomery/JR Stephanie Parker/FR James Parle/JR Jason Randy/JR
Tim Schoen/JR Jennifer Tsakoumakis/SO Electrical Engineers Carlos Florencio/SO Ryan Gross/SO Jill Swain/SO Other Engineers Nick Danziger/UNDC/FR George Sechrist/ISE/SR
USC ENGINEER
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