Materials and Structures
Lighter, stronger airframes: composites such as carbon and glass fibre, wing load testing with sensors, smart materials like shape-memory alloys, and structural health monitoring with fibre optics.
About this project
Weight decides how long an aircraft flies and how much it can carry. This track compares traditional balsa and foam construction with carbon-fibre and glass-fibre composites, and checks the results the engineering way: by loading a wing until it bends and measuring how much.
Strain gauges on a test wing give real numbers to compare with hand calculations and finite-element simulation. Shape-memory alloys and fibre-optic sensing are explored as research studies, starting from published work and small bench samples.
What the team is working on
- Use composites (carbon and glass fibre) in airframe parts and compare them with balsa and foam
- Load-test wings with strain gauges and compare the results with FEA
- Study smart materials, such as shape-memory alloy actuators, for small control surfaces
- Explore structural health monitoring with fibre-optic sensors as a research study
Tools and technologies
- Carbon & glass fibre
- Vacuum bagging
- Strain gauges
- FEA (ANSYS)
- Shape-memory alloys
- Fibre Bragg gratings
More projects
Aircraft design
Aircraft Design: Glider, UAV and VTOLDesigning the club's next aircraft from first sketch to flight: a mini glider and UAV, a more efficient wing developed with CAD and CFD, and a VTOL airframe.
Flight control & stability
Flight Control and StabilityMaking aircraft fly steadily on their own: sensor-based auto-stabilisation, fly-by-wire and fly-by-light control links, an AI-assisted autopilot, and flight-dynamics simulation in MATLAB/Simulink.
Propulsion systems
Propulsion SystemsWhat makes aircraft go, and how to make it better: electric and hybrid propulsion for drones and planes, micro jet engine study and testing, efficiency measurements on small engines, and quieter propellers.