Laying the Path for Flight

Admin Project Achievements

This week, the Wings Team of the Human Powered Airplane project worked on attaching the foam leading edges onto the right wing tip section of our 108 foot wing. Our 108 foot wing is split into 5 sections that are connected together for its full length with a carbon fiber spar and ribs as the main structural members across the …

Testing Plasma Bonding

Admin Project Achievements

For this project, we will be testing two prototypes made with different materials. One will be created using Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and the other will be made from CNC machined plastic. Previous experiments with PDMS and glass have shown that there has been difficulty in bonding the two together. Since the channels will be created from PDMS, our device requires a …

Start Your Engine!

Admin Project Achievements

For the week of 2/9/15 – 2/13/15 we successfully had the engine start and run on starter fluid! This was a huge milestone because we had been doing maintenance, research, and professional consulting to ensure the generator set was safe to run for several weeks prior. Through the week we established our measurement parameters and are currently working out the …

UAV Test Flight Success

Admin Project Achievements

About 3 weeks ago when we first flew our plane it crashed about 8 seconds after takeoff. This was due to a hardware problem since the receiver we were using went out of range. The plane has two major structural components, the wing and the spine. Those two are fused together by melting two 3d printed parts. When the plane …

Getting the Crash Head Dummy Ready for Impact

Admin Project Achievements

This week, we received the ATD head from Humanetics! The ATD head is internally equipped with six accelerometers. Three of the accelerometers are piezoresistive, meaning they gain a charge when accelerated, and the magnitude of the charge is a function of the acceleration. The other three are DTS angular rate sensors. In order to support the ATD head and neck …

High Speed Soccer Ball Launches

Admin Project Achievements

This week, we received confirmation from our lessee that the Anthropomorphic Test Dummy (ATD) would be arriving on the 12th of February. While exciting news, it means that we have a hard deadline that is quickly approaching. Our remaining tasks are to create a mount for the ATD head and neck assembly, create a mount for our radar gun, to …