Student Work

A fixed-wing drone for an internal Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) sponsored flight competition was designed, constructed, and tested. The competition requirements reward maximizing flight range and payload fraction, autonomous operation, and require a payload release system to accurately hit a prescribed target. In this report we present our design process and discuss particular design innovations. The high lift-drag ratio aircraft uses a fiberglass sandwich composite wing combined with a foam-board panel fuselage to maximize weight savings and structural rigidity. The aircraft is catapult launched and uses landing gear that deploys automatically upon payload release. A waypoint navigation system with automatic payload release is also incorporated to improve the bombing accuracy.

Creator

• Umbricht, Marc P.
• Blackstock, Keith Thabo
• Bellitto, Robert James
• Blomquist, Conor Wood

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• E-project-051120-200746

Advisor

• Olinger, David J.
• Jayachandran, Jagannath

Year

• 2020

Date created

• 2020-05-11

Resource type

• Major Qualifying Project

Major

• Aerospace Engineering

Rights statement

• In Copyright

License

• All rights reserved

Relationships

In Collection:

• Major Qualifying Projects

Items

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	A_High_Performance_Aircraft_for_the_2020_WPI_UAV_Competition.pdf	2020-08-22	Public	Press to Select an action Download