Bottlefly - AIAA DB contest

摘要

This article describes the process used to design the Bottlefly, which is the Technion - IsraelInstitute of technology's entry in the 2007-2008 AIAA Design/Build/Fly competition. The goal of thedesign was to maximize the competition score, which is a combination of the report score and totalflight score. The Bottlefly project required a student design group with extensive knowledge inaircraft design and a skilled manufacturing group, together with capabilities of aerospace projectintegration and management, for a complete successful team.In order to have the aircraft ready and perfected in time for the contest, the processes of designingand building were divided into three phases: conceptual design, preliminary design, and detaileddesign.Conceptual design analysis focused on selecting the configuration that would maximize thecompetition score. The competition rules were analyzed to identify key mission requirements. Flightscore calculation was defined as the sum of scores of the two missions, "Delivery" and "Payload",with an importance ratio of 1:2 in favor of the latter. For both missions, the battery weight of theaircraft was seen to be the most significant contributor to the scores. Hence, selecting battery packsfor each mission was a major objective throughout the design process. Loading the aircraft is to betimed and scored before each payload mission; therefore, several hatch designs and securing methodswere studied and tested as the ability to quickly load the aircraft was significant for maximizing thescore. Many possible aircraft and sub-system configurations were investigated. Configurations wereanalyzed using a figure of merit (FOM) tables. First, the wing configuration was selected, along with