The new senior design project LIBRA has initiated! The project is being led by Ahmed Hassan and consists of Arman Zargaryan(team lead), Miran Govind (purchasing manager), Patrick Huynh (documentation), Tyler Gorman, Dong Kim, Sergio Linares, and Dennis Ye.

Our main goal for this quarter is to experimentally verify the Lie-Bracket maneuver with an airplane at a high angle of attack by oscillating the ailerons and elevators out of phase in a wind tunnel.

We have finished setting up meeting times and lab times, as well as the subgroups for the design project: finding an airplane model and modifying it to be able to withstand wind tunnel conditions and able to accommodate for our oscillatory mechanism and mount, designing a driving mechanism for the aileron and elevator so that these components may oscillate out of phase as well designing the control system, and designing a 3 degree-of-freedom mount that allows for pitching, rolling, and vertical motion (which may be the most challenging one).

Arman, Sergio, and Miran are in the airplane model subgroup, Tyler and I (Patrick) are in the aileron/elevator mechanism design subgroup, and Dennis and Dong are in the mount design subgroup.

As of now, we were able to successfully pick an airplane model that fits the wind tunnel specifications. Hopefully as we obtain our airplane as soon as possible, we can start getting measurements in order to start 3D modeling of a driving mechanism and mount design. Our next objective is to figure out a way to reinforce the airplane since it is made of foam. Our other two subgroups are still in the research phase in order to determine the designs that meet our needs.

Patrick Huynh
LIBRA Documentations Member