Engineering Commons^™

Rc Plane Variable Wing Design, Brian Mincks, Cameron Bard, Noah Rowe

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Each year the AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) hosts a design competition where college teams design and fly a small, remote-controlled, battery-powered airplane. For this competition, scoring primarily depends upon the following: maximizing payload, maximizing speed, minimizing weight, minimizing wingspan. Since wingspan is a key scoring factor and variable wing geometry is allowed, our design team has decided to design a pivoting wing system that can be remotely activated immediately before and after takeoff and landing respectively.