Problem Statement
"Design and build a creative and entertaining yet effective, human powered flying machine capable of winning a RedBull Flugtag competition.”
Key Design Aspects
The winner of the Flugtag competition is decided by a teams ability to demonstrate proficiency in the following categories:
Flight
The most important thing we considered during our design process was the machine's ability to sustain flight. This primarily involved incorporating design elements that would maximize lift, while being cognizant of adding any unnecessary parts that would increase drag and reduce flight capability.
Creativity
Part of the fun of Flugtag events is teams can draw inspiration from anything. In order to stand out in a competition that features so many zany creations, we needed a design that got peoples attention.
Entertainment
The final criteria on which teams are judged is the entertainment factor. Many Flugtag teams choreograph a dance or routine to show off before taking off. We had planned to pay homage to our design inspiration by wearing Avatar costumes and performing a dance that is done in the show.
Design Specs
Knowing our competition run will be judged on three separate criteria, we broke down our design specs into subcategories. The creativity and entertainment aspects were put into the overall competition specs, while the specs for the physical design were broken down into two additional subcategories: the glider and the cart.
Design Iterations
This is a diagram on our very first idea. One of our team members is on the Ultimate Frisbee team at Tulane and our idea entailed pushing the Flugtag down the ramp and rotational energy of the wheels would speed up the giant frisbee and then Chase our designated pilot would float away from the world .
Small Scale Prototype
During the Fall of 2019, we built a small scale prototype of our full size design. It is shown here on the left. Since then we have changed the main wings to rectangles to maximize surface area to generate lift.
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If not for the unfortunate circumstances of COVID-19 we were primed and ready to build a full scale model. We had obtained all the hard to get materials such as aluminum pipes and wheels.
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We had planned to display pictures, videos of our full scale Flugtag and also we designed our wings to be detachable in order to bring them in to the in person Expo.
Codes and Standards
One of the larger goals of this project and course is to learn how to incorporate professional engergneergin standards into the design process. Using Tulane's library database, we were able to find several industry standards that guided our creative process. The two most important sets of codes we used were:​
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American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) F2564: Standard Specification for Design and Performance of a Light Sport Glider fixed wing light sport aircraft
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American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) F2564: Standard Practice for Production Acceptance in the Manufacture of a Fixed Wing Light Sport Aircraft
Below you can see a few of the specific codes and standards we used during the design process, as well as a brief description of the regulation the code is used to enforce.
