For my senior design, our team designed, built, and flew an R/C aircraft to deliver a payload to a target a couple of miles away and return to base. The project had several constraints, including a 7.5-foot maximum wingspan and a 12-pound maximum takeoff weight. The payload was about shoebox-sized and weighed 4 pounds, the aircraft had to fit inside a Pelican case before launch, and our budget was only around $200.

Designing an aircraft to release a payload weighing one-third of its fully loaded weight, while still allowing the aircraft to be repeatedly disassembled and reassembled, was a significant challenge. I completed the aircraft’s CAD modeling in SOLIDWORKS and made the design parametric so we could iterate quickly and evaluate changes with CFD.

The finished aircraft closely matched the CAD model, and its detailed geometry supported CNC machining of the foam components. The aircraft had center-of-gravity issues that we addressed by exceeding the maximum allowable takeoff weight. Despite this, it flew, and our team was among the few to reliably release its payload in flight.