Task 6

Plan Of Action

Nur Harell, Tyler Jordan

In the following, team SPAERO presents the updates for its Plan of Action. The enhanced Plan includes adjusted approaches due to "Lessons Learned" as the project progresses.

As for today (4/29/2015), the overall project progress proceeded as expected. All the different Disciplines within Team SPAERO have worked closely together to design, manufacture and test its first prototype. A strict and conservative time management as well as permanent communication between the disciplines allowed the team to overcome unexpected difficulties during the design and manufacturing process and to deliver on time. This fact reassures the team that the approach taken is the right one. The Plan of Action will be updated to account for the new insights gained during prior project stages.

The manufacturing process has turned out to me more time consuming than expected. For future prototypes, the design and manufacturing teams will work together to improve SPAERO's rapid prototyping capabilities. The goal is to be able to fabricate each individual part (wings, fuselage, tail,...) in less than 5 hours. This will increase the team's flexibility immensely since modular parts allow for quick replacement and design improvements can be implemented rapidly. The manufacturing process for the entire prototype should be less than two days. This constraint ensures the ability to perform during the final competition in the unlikely case of a crash resulting in the total destruction of the prototype. These requirements will be one of the driving aspects during future design process.

Additional improvements in the design, such as aerodynamic and structural optimization result in the need for a next generation prototype. The design process will begin right after the PS2 due date and is to be finished by 5/8/2015. This gives the team sufficient time to test the aircraft and attain experimental data which will be forwarded to the controls and mission planing teams. Should a third (and final) prototype be necessary, it must be ready to fly by 5/15/2015. This goal gives the controls team enough time to design robust and reliable control laws and enables the mission planing team to finalize the algorithms with given (non changing) constraints.

Apart from the changes listed above, the Plan of Action remains as presented in PS1, the adjusted flowchart is attached below.

The Team progress meetings, which are held twice weekly turned out to be an extraordinary platform for ensuring well functioning interdisciplinary communication as well as for discussing game-changing decisions. This approach is therefore to be continued.