Aim of Advanced Aerospace Design 2009-2010
Provide a capstone design course for the MEng Aerospace degree and core design component of the Aerospace MSc that delivers on the UK-SPEC learning outcomes for design, Table 1
Table 1 Engineering UK- SPEC learning outcomes for Design
Learning and teaching strategy
* Supervised group work activity spread over 2 semesters. No formal lectures
* Multidisciplinary team approach - individuals in a team specialise in different areas, but also absorb some learning from other group members through need for collaboration/team based approach. All students develop the stated design and transferable skills
* Max of 7 students per team. Expected quantity of output scales with team size
* Learning supported by rapid feedback to students following assessment
Assessment strategy
* Academic assessment designed to provide a project review framework similar to that experienced in real life design projects (bid, PDR, FDR, trade show, customer acceptance)
* Assessment is 50% based on group performance and 50% individual performance
* Individual performance is assessed by individual report in first semester and reflective log in second semester
Project brief
Customer requirement
· Develop and validate a generic design process for the production of fixed wing UAVs for autonomous flight vehicle training applications
Specific requirements
1. The input to the design process will be a customer requirement defined by a combination of payload mass, flight duration, max climb angle, manoeuvrability and operational weather conditions. The approximate limits of the required design envelope are an all up flight mass of less than 1.5kg, maximum flight speed less than 15m/s, duration less than 1 hour, max climb angle less than 45o. Groups will be provided with group-specific design points after the preliminary design review
2. The vehicle payload is to be a VGA quality or better video camera with minimum 100m line of sight wireless transmitter. The ability to store video onboard would also be an advantage
3. The vehicle should be equipped with the Paparazzi autopilot system (approx mass 70g). Flight testing will be in manual control mode (mode 1)
4. It is desirable that the vehicle can be test flown in a minimum weight configuration without autopilot and camera
5. Propulsion power source should be electric
6. The vehicle should be easy to fly by a novice model RC pilot
7. The airframe must be robust to hard landings and easily repairable following a crash. The flight control hardware and propulsion system must be protected from crash damage as far as practicable
8. Airframe components should be COTS or manufacturable within a university workshop environment using rapid manufacturing techniques suitable for undergraduate students, e.g. foam hotwire, plastic vacuum forming, basic metal working using hand tools. Hot wire foam cutting of wing sections will be outsourced to foamwings.co.uk. Outsourced laser cutting of 2d parts will also be available
9. The airframe, r/c system (receiver, servos) and propulsion system (battery, motor, speed controller, prop) cost should be as low as practicable and must be less than £200 including labour costs (cost will depend significantly on vehicle specification). Cost of camera payload and autonomous systems hardware should be evaluated separately
10. A Simulink-based flight simulation should be provided to support flight training and evaluation of autonomous operation of the vehicle
11. Design calculations must be backed up with test data from experiments wherever practicable
Design roles
It is expected that the design problem is tackled as a multidisciplinary team made up of some or all of the following roles:
* Project management
o Project planning
o Project internal communications
o Resource balancing
* Chief engineer
o Design integration
o Technical monitoring
o Project external communications
* Propulsion
o Propulsion system modelling and measurement
o Motor and propeller selection/design
o Power induced aerodynamics
* Structures and materials
o Structural design
o Loads (flight and crash), stressing and structural optimisation
o Materials specification and testing
* Manufacturing, assembly and packaging
o Manufacturing methods
o Design for manufacture, assembly and transport
o All aspects of cost
* Aerodynamics and performance
o Lift and drag estimation and measurement
o Performance evaluation
o Modelling support
* Stability and control
o Estimation of aerodynamic derivatives
o Control surface sizing
o 6dof model development
* Weight and balance
o Mass estimation
o Cg management
o Optimisation for minimum mass
* Simulation
o 6dof model development and validation
o visualisation
o User experience
* Avionics
o Payload integration
o Autonomous operations
o Electronic systems
* CAD
o Geometry definition
o Model parametisation
o Internal and external communications
Each group must have a nominated project manager and chief engineer who should be different people. Other roles can be assigned more flexibly. As a guide, each team member should not contribute to more than two roles and no more than two people should contribute to a given role. There should be only one person each for the project management and chief engineer roles (but these people can also take on other roles). There should be a nominated lead for each role. The above list of roles is not prescriptive or exhaustive.
The course plan and assessment breakdown are shown in Tables 2 and 3, respectively.
Working practices
Groups should hold at least one documented project meeting every week. If you are not sure how to run professional meetings then find out, e.g. via http://www.businessballs.com/meetings.htm, and establish an agreed format for your group. Meeting agendas and minutes are a required deliverable for the project and will be used to help inform the assessment of the group's performance. It is primarily the project manager's responsibility to make sure meetings are being used as an effective part of the group getting the job done.
As with all group work projects, people will bring different skills and experience to the team and it is important to maximise the opportunity people have for contributing and learning. Inevitably there will be times when team members are unable to deliver on agreed contributions and this needs managing in a professional manner. In the first instance, the group should provide support to those who need it. If however the project is being significantly delayed by persistent non attendance of group members at scheduled meetings or persistent delay in producing agreed work then a formal written communication should be made to the group member by the project manager detailing the areas of concern and what needs to happen to get things back on track. In cases where it is the project manager non performing then the communication should be via the chief engineer. This communication should be CC'd to unit leader Bill Crowther. The team member concerned then has 2 weeks to reasonably address the issues raised. If the matter can not be resolved successfully within the group in this time then team member will be interviewed. As a last resort, non contributing team members will be transferred to an individual design project.
Description of assessments
1. Project bid document
The bid document should include
* A title page with short abstract
* A list of the team members and their allocated roles
* A description of the proposed approach the group will take to meet the customer requirement (approx half a page)
* A list of project objectives, milestones and deliverables, combined with a graphical project plan in the form of a Gantt chart produced in Excel or MS Project. The time resolution of the plan should be 1 day
* A project management statement that describes how the group intends to organise itself in terms of meetings, technical decision making and ground rules for group working (approx half a page)
* A cost statement that includes an estimate for the total cost of the project and an approximate cost breakdown. It is recognised that the major cost will be labour. Assume a charge rate of £10 per hour
Mark breakdown
Any bid documents receiving a mark of less than 70% will be rejected and will require revision and resubmission within a week.
Some example project bid documents are included on the course BB site. These were prepared for specific requirements different to those stated above so should be used for information only.
The Wikipedia entry for project planning is a good start for background reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_planning.
Submission
Bid documents should be submitted electronically via BB, one per group. Due 5pm Friday 2nd October. Assessment feedback will be provided at 9am on Wednesday 7th October.
2. Preliminary design review presentation
The preliminary design phase of the present project requires the development of a skeleton design process that includes all the key elements that will be in the final process; however the underlying models and tools will only be in prototype form. E.g. there will probably be a parametric CAD model for the preliminary design review, however at this stage this will not be fully integrated with engineering analysis tools such as Matlab or Excel. You should use up to three example specifications of your choice to illustrate how your design process will work in practice. For one of the examples you should show the final design solution in as much detail as practical.
Each group has 15 minutes to present followed by 10 minutes of questions. It is not a requirement that everyone presents - it is up to the group how they wish to present the material.
You should assume that the audience (the customer) is familiar with the specification and has good understanding of undergraduate level aerospace engineering principles. Groups should provide 2 copies of the slides (4 per page) as a handout.
Date: 28th October. Location: GB C18. Start time: from 8am
Slide preferences
* Use a slide template with appropriate header and footer for group consistency. Dark text on a white background is recommended
* Try to use at least 16 point font for all text, including labels on diagrams and graphs. Use bullet points. Avoid using animation
* Use graphics where possible. Always use graphs instead of tables to present numerical data
* Only include equations if absolutely necessary
* Use no more than one slide per minute
Assessment
The presentation will be assessed 100% on technical content.
Lack of preparation and/or poor presentation will implicitly attract negative marks.
Feedback via email by end of Thursday 29th October
3. Final design review report
The detailed design phase of the design project will be assessed via formal technical report.
The customer will use the final design report to answer the following three questions:
1) How useful is the proposed design process in the context of the customer's needs?
2) What evidence is there that the method has been validated by a range of means?
3) What confidence is there in individuals in the team successfully contributing towards the development of a flying prototype in phase 2 of the project?
The assessment is based on 83% individual contribution, 17% group contribution. Different roles will contribute in different ways to answering the above questions.
Individuals have a page limit of no more than 10 pages each for the main body of the report (i.e. not cover page, index, appendices etc) and 5 pages each in the appendices. The page limits are independent of the number of people in the team. Use sensible margins and a font size no smaller than 11 point. Use the appendices for important reference materials and calculations, etc. Do not put essential figures and tables in the appendices. It is required that meeting minutes and agendas, and a final project plan are included as appendix items (in addition to the 5 page each limit). The author of each section should be clearly identified in the text. Material going beyond the 10 page limit will be read with decreasing attention. It is suggested that each contribution is written in the form of a mini report within a report, i.e. there should a section summary, intro, main body and conclusions. Where there are multiple contributions to a single role this can be problematic to assess. It is understood that this is an artificial constraint. It is requested that students try to make the process of assessment as a straightforward as possible.
Due 5pm, 2nd December. Submit electronically via BB as a Word document to enable commenting (not pdf).
Feedback will be provided to students on Wednesday 9th December.
4. Trade show
Date: Wednesday 3rd March 2010. Time: 9-12noon. Location: TBC
Aim: For groups to sell their design process and specific design to potential customers through the medium of a presentation stand similar to those typically found a trade fairs. Potential customers will spend no more than 5 minutes at any one stand. Material should be presented in the form of posters, table top hardware/models, CAD model or equivalent on a laptop, and a flight simulator. Groups will have a minimum of 2 linear metres of wall and table space available to display in.
Assessment
Each stand will be visited by two assessing customers, who will give a score based on how likely they would purchase future products or services from the team as a result of the material presented on the stand: very likely = 70%+, quite likely = 60%+, maybe = 50%+, probably not = 40%+.
5. Video demonstration
Due 5pm Wednesday 24th March 2010. Upload to YouTube or equivalent and submit hyperlink with group name via BB.
Produce a short (5 minute max) video presentation illustrating your design method and example vehicle. The video content should be engaging for a non technical audience but also deliver the key technical messages to potential customers. The video should be an advert for the capabilities of your team, not a product sales pitch. Your video should use appropriate titles to identify your group, course/school/university and purpose of the video.
Video assessed 100% on success in communicating technical information to wide audience: all viewers get some useful information = 70%+, most viewers get some useful information = 60%+, video has limited appeal to many viewers = 50%+, video fails to communicate effectively in most areas = 40%+ .
6. Reflective log/interview
Students should produce a reflective log on the design activity that covers the following three points:
It is expected that these logs should be around six pages or 3000 words. Submit via BB by 5pm Wednesday 28th March 2010. Assessment will be based 100% on the perceived breadth and depth of learning acquired during the design project. It should be noted that in many endeavours as much is learnt from failure as from success and this should be bourn in mind when writing the log. It is expected that any student that has fully engaged with the design project should be able to score well in this assessment. Students that have not fully engaged will have more limited opportunities for meaningful reflection.
Five minute personal interviews will take place over the last two weeks of the semester. These interviews will be used to confirm the assessment of the reflective logs.
Group allocation
If you have not been allocated a group or someone is missing please let WJC know.
