2011 SAE ADW: A Look Back

The SkyHawks represented University of Petroleum & Energy Studies (UPES) at the annual aerospace design competition “SAE Aero Design West” held from March 18^th to 20^th, 2011 at Fort Worth, Texas in USA. The team is the first from the state of Uttarakhand to take part in this prestigious event. ‘The SkyHawks’ were placed third in Asia overall. The competition, which has been held since 1995 at the Thunderbird Flying Field in Fort Worth, requires teams from engineering schools to design and fabricate an aircraft that conforms to the competition’s specifications. The competition is basically split into three classes, namely: Regular, Micro and Advanced; each having their own subset of rules, though the main objective is to lift maximum payload.

The competition is basically conducted by Lockheed Martin, a major American aerospace company for the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) which has nearly 140 collegiate clubs in India to expose engineering students to the demands of the industry through compromise, group work and meeting deadlines.

The team was sponsored 2.5 lakh rupees for fabricating the aircraft by their university, while design software was sponsored by Dassault Systemés. Travel and other expenses were borne by the students themselves, who started work on the aircraft in November 2010.

The team’s aircraft christened ‘The SkyHawk’ – having a tandem wing configuration secured the team the 12^th rank amongst 34 teams in Regular Class and amongst 54 teams overall (including Micro and Advanced Classes) from all over the world. The team was required to submit a Design Report on February 3^rd, 2011 which outlined their design, describing how they arrived at the final configuration, for which they stood 11^th internationally and was recognized as the best design from Asia. The six students left for Texas on March 15^th, immediately after their mid-semester exams and returned on the 24^th.

The team’s aircraft was given a special mention for lifting payload of 8.3 kilograms, which was more than double its own weight. The students also submitted a NASA Systems Engineering Report which explained the engineering practices employed during the design and fabrication of the aircraft. Some of the other teams included NIT (Jamshedpur), PESIT (Bangalore) and VJTI (Mumbai) from India, Texas A&M, University of Tulsa and Northern Arizona University from USA. Teams from other countries included the Polish Air Force Academy, University of Toronto and Interamerican Institute-Puerto Rico Bayamon. The winners of the regular class were LeTourneau University from the United States.