Full Size Plane Design
Recently, our aircraft design course was restructured to use Simulink. We would essentially input parameters from a plane that we built, into a 6 degree of freedom (6DOF) model in Simulink. Then we would add closed loop controls to further control the plane by telling the model the desired altitude, attitude, etc. This was basically making an autopilot.
We built the airplane using historical data provided in Raymer's design book. This book essentially was a guide toward picking airfoil section, taper ratios, aspect ratios, etc. We took this information and entered this into XFLR5 which is a separate open source program that helps model basic features of an airplane.
The first half of the semester was learning XFLR5, Simulink, and getting basic parameters for an airplane. The report is attached here.
The second half of the semester was further refining our airplane, and adding in control loops to make our airplane fly without a pilot using the stick in a sense. The report is attached here.
We built the airplane using historical data provided in Raymer's design book. This book essentially was a guide toward picking airfoil section, taper ratios, aspect ratios, etc. We took this information and entered this into XFLR5 which is a separate open source program that helps model basic features of an airplane.
The first half of the semester was learning XFLR5, Simulink, and getting basic parameters for an airplane. The report is attached here.
The second half of the semester was further refining our airplane, and adding in control loops to make our airplane fly without a pilot using the stick in a sense. The report is attached here.
Since this was the first semester that this type of work was done, we were lost a lot of the time but we all worked together to make something useful. This class will be much better a second time around since the professor knows this much already. We originally aspired to have a joystick connected so we can fly our own planes. I will most likely work with this model some more in the second design class to create an RC
airplane with a autopilot. At that point we are just building drones which is very exciting.
