Overview
The Advanced Aircraft Design (AAD) Capstone Project is a multi-year project where students in their final year of undergraduate engineering work on aircraft design projects. The current aircraft that is being design is called the BumbleB and is an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, which will have a wide range of applications from passenger/cargo missions to medevac missions. The performance goals are to have a range of 300km at 100-200 kts cruise and a payload of 500kg. This is the second year of the BumbleB design phase where we are taking the preliminary designs from last year and working to have a final design by the end of the year.
The Background
The cause of Capstone Projects is too give students experience working in larger engineering projects with different disciplines so that they get the opportunity to learn how to coordinate with different sub groups. The goal of the BumbleB aircraft is too investigate electric/hybrid propulsion in aircraft and also develop VTOL aircraft which incorporates lots of novel aerospace developments. The incorporation of battery and motors into aircraft is a major challenge for the industry as a whole and eVTOL aircraft have the potential to revolutionize the transportation industry.
The Rollout
The funds raised this year will be put towards developing a sub-scale demonstrator (SSD) that will be used to test and develop the BumbleB in its hover mode as this will require an iterative design process to develop the controllers for stability in a vertical hover. The funds will also be put towards purchasing flight simulator equipment to design and test interfaces and flight characteristics of the aircraft. The equipment purchased for this project will be of benefit to future aircraft design projects at Carleton as well.