Team: 24
School: Los Alamos High
Area of Science: Engineering
Proposal: Team Members: Andres Iturregui, Daniel Kim
In the years of 2013 through 2017, accidents involving manned aircraft have increased by 40% and doubled for specific aircraft. In those same years, at least 133 service pilots were killed by mishaps. Along with that, the F-35 fighter jet program costs a staggering 1.5 trillion dollars.
A new solution: the UAV program within the U.S Air Force has been slowly growing. UAVs have several benefits over manned aircraft: they don’t risk the life of the pilot, they are cheaper, can man stations for longer, and they are less of a problem if they crash. The adoption of the usage of drones is growing more and more, which could also create more jobs, and lower the incredibly expensive budget for making stealthy fighter jets.
The goal of this project is to make a small UAV using a small quadcopter and launching a rocket off of it. Unfortunately, doing this is illegal, so we will be measuring the thrust of the rocket engine using an Arduino, and using the data to see if the drone can handle the thrust and weight, without illegally launching the rocket from the drone.
The motor test stand rig will consist of a load cell, load cell amplifier, and an Arduino UNO. Using the Arduino IDE (C/C++) we will be able to accurately measure the thrust of the motor and make a graph of the data, then use the data to find out if this UAV is possible.
Team Members:
Sponsoring Teacher: NA