Highlander Air is one of the only airplane design teams at the University of California, Riverside. The objective of this project is to provide students an opportunity to learn about aerospace engineering and the engineering design process through hands-on means. This project diversifies the available student projects under the engineering college since the school does not have an aerospace department.
The project's technical aspect focuses on designing an electrical passenger airplane capable of carrying tennis ball passengers while having a gross maximum weight of under 50 lbs. The first airplane design features a high wing with the traditional taildragger empennage configuration, and a 10 lbf engine.
Shown below is the video of our thrust test with the motor and one of two propellers. The engine setup was mounted on a wooden test platform and braced to a skateboard, with the entire assembly then connected to a force gauge. The tension force measured by the force gauge was then the thrust produced by the engine setup. The final metric we obtained was approximately 10 lbf.
Soft: Leadership | Organization | Communication
Software: Solidworks | Matlab
Hardware: Electrical Circuits | 3D Printer | Laser Cutter