Design Build Fly 2025-2026

Overview

For our 2025-2026 Design Build Fly competition, our team designed and built a RC airplane to compete in the AIAA DBF competition. The goal for this year's competition was to design a plane that could carry as much payload (both size and weight) as possible, as well as unfurling and dropping a banner, while flying the requisite course.

My Contribution

As a Structures Engineer, I was mainly delegated with designing and constructing the fuselage, wings, and tails of the aircraft. To this end, within design and rule constraints I modeled the parts in Fusion360. Through three iterations of the plane, I updated fuselage design for structural stability, especially during takeoff and landing. I also iterated different wiring channels for ease of assembly and maintenance. With aerodynamic constraints given by team members, as well as previous failures in mind, I redesigned the wings and tails for better stability and control. This involved resizing ailerons and the elevator, as well as switching to a swept horizontal tail. We used a combination of 3D printing, Hotwire CNC, laser cutting, and carbon fiber manufacutring to construct the plane.

Results

Although we didn't end up going very far in competition, it was a great learning experience for me. This was my first long-term project of this magnitude, and I learned a lot about the design and construction process, as well as improving dramatically at CAD and learning how to use different manufacturing tools.