Boeing Experimental Flight

The primary objective of Boeing Experimental Flight (BEF) is to provide an increased understanding of aircraft design and how it is affected by the challenges of green flight. BEF shall research, design, and test different aspects of an aircraft’s performance compared to current industry standards. Performing this type of research and development shall impart the future engineers with a stronger background in aircraft performance and design for the next generation of aircraft.

Goals

• Complete the new wing and successfully test it with a flight
• Have a better understanding of low level analysis with SUAVE
• Develop a CAD model based on results from OpenVSP iterations

Deliverables

• Continue fabrication of the new wing design from Fall 2022 semester
• Tests flights utilizing new wing design and accompanying reports
• CAD model of AL-37 with the new truss-braced wing

Project Reflection – Spring 2023

The project has been through many unexpected situations throughout the semester, and the teams adapted well. There was a lot of communication between teams to get things done, and many good relationships were formed. On both the software and manufacturing side, both teams faced their share of difficulties. Many lessons were learned, with most of the lessons being related to time management. One lesson was to leave a larger margin of time for manufacturing. Things can go wrong when manufacturing a part, especially if it’s as complex as a wing. So, there needs to be a time margin to account for all the potential issues the team could encounter. Another was to stop focusing on software that wasn’t meeting the team’s expectations and move on to focus on alternative solutions quicker. One of the biggest setbacks with utilizing a new piece of software is that time must be set aside to learn the software to use it efficiently. Most of the time, the learning period is worth the setback for long-term success. However, if the software cannot be picked up in a reasonable amount of time, this could cause serious harm to a team’s or project’s schedule. This is why sometimes it’s good to let the software go and start from scratch. These are lessons that the teams will learn from and carry into the development and manufacturing of the truss-braced wing.