FME
Flight Mechanical Design of a MAV
In this event students in teams are required to develop a miniature aircraft with emphasis placed on flight dynamics characteristics. At the start of the project any required conditions such as size limitations are clarified. In addition, design goals are defined according to evaluation criteria as measured later in flight tests.
Basis for the designs will be the theories and tools introduced in the Flight Dynamics lecture. Aside from layout calculations by hand, further software tools such as XFLR5, Datcom and Matlab will be used throughout the project.
After completion of design the aircraft will be physically constructed within the institute’s own freeflight laboratory by student assistants, and prepared for connection to the payload. The closure of the project is marked by flight-test day, which is held in a friendly atmosphere at our local model aircraft airfield in Orsbach. Here one by one all model aircraft will complete a pre-defined test-program. The flight and performance data are then recorded and displayed through our flight computer, and subsequently evaluated to determine the winning team.