Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Symposium
Each year, seniors from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering participate in Senior Design, in which students showcase a variety of senior design projects that they built throughout the semester.
The course is split into a Mechanical Engineering Senior Design Course and an Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Course, both of which task students with specific issues they must solve by designing and building a prototype of a product or device that could aid in a variety of different applications.
In the 2023 Aerospace Engineering Senior Design course, there were 11 teams comprised of 73 total students. Three teams were tasked with proposing a realistic and environmentally safe solution to dispose of old rocket and satellite debris using cubesat architecture capable of being launched on a commercial rideshare mission. Three teams built fixed-wing aircrafts and three teams built multi-copter aircrafts, both of which were tasked with Develop a simple, modular aircraft capable of at least two unique tasks to support the North Carolina Forest Service.
One team from each of these three sections was selected by judges as the winners of their respective sections during the annual Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Symposium on Friday, April 7. To win over the judges and show the capabilities of their designs, teams conducted 15 minute presentations in the morning and poster sessions in the afternoon – during which friends, family, colleagues and mentors came out in droves to see the seniors’ hard work in action.
Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Instructor Dr. Felix Ewere presented three Awards for Outstanding Project Managers in 2023, which were awarded to three team leads that went above and beyond in the development of their projects. This year’s winners were Galen Wilcox of the fixed-wing section, Jorge Francke of the cubesat section, and Andrew Gantt of multi-copter section.
Another team was comprised of NC State’s AIAA Design Build Fly (DBF) Team, whose job was to develop The mission for 2023 is to design, build and test an aircraft to execute electronic warfare (EW) missions. Flight missions included staging of the aircraft, surveillance and jamming. The goal was a balanced design possessing good demonstrated flight handling qualities and practical and affordable manufacturing requirements while providing a high vehicle performance.
Wolfeye was able to compete and fly in the 2023 competition after a catastrophic crash rendered the 2022 DBF team unable to compete. This year’s team (comprised of seven senior design students and several undergraduates), successfully completed their ground mission to test for structural deformation by placing weight on fuselage while wingtips are mounted to test fixture, and the first flight mission to complete three laps within the five minutes without carrying a payload. Wolfeye unfortunately crashed on the third attempt of their second mission. NC State DBF team placed 51st out of about 100 teams overall.
In the spacecraft section, Team Space Raccoons was declared the winner. Their team includes Caden Bjorndahl, Joshua Boyd, Jordan Gonzaga, Jeshua Ray, Parker Rhyne, Olivia Scott, Caden Speakman and Peter Zheng.
In the fixed-wing section, Team LORAX was the winner. Team members included Andrew Burgess, Brian Feddern, Victor Hugo, Blake Monkus, Seth Puckett and Red Ruggiero.
Finally, Team LOCH was declared the winner of the multi-copter section and their team was made up of Katie Curtsinger, Marceli Lewtak, Ethan Sites, Luis Villalobos and Ryan Wagoner.
One final team was comprised of the NC State High-Powered Rocketry Team, also known as “Tacho-Lycos,” which each year constructs a rocket to compete in NASA’s Student Launch Competition. In 2023, the team (which includes eight senior design students) constructed their 2023 Rocket, which was taken to the compete against other teams from across the country in Huntsville, Alabama on April 15 and 16. Competition results will be announced this Summer.
Join us at our next Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Symposium
Coming Spring 2024
Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Posters