The first fuselage was our preliminary design before in depth analysis. The new fuselage design shown below is 19% more aerodynamic and has enhanced dimensions for electronics packaging. The design is more aerodynamic by using lofting techniques in Solidworks to give the fuselage a more streamlined design, which reduced drag by 11% and increased flight time by 3 minutes. Additionally, the new fuselage structure houses the servos, receiver, flight and telemetry modules, and batteries safely. This design will prevent electrical disconnections to maintain control of the aircraft and ensure safe operation. Housing the batteries effectively will also prevent them from moving which can detrimentally alter the center of gravity which could result in a loss of control. Additionally, the larger fuselage ensures ample room for center of gravity adjustments by having the ability to shift battery location up to 275mm forward. The fuselage has been redesigned to be 120mm tall and 160mm wide to incorporate up to two 22.2 volt 7000mAh Li-Po flight batteries for maximum performance and extended range.

The initial airfoil used was the N-22 airfoil that is great for general purpose but it wasn't the best option that we could use. In order to optimize our airfoil design, we performed many calculations in MATLAB that were dependent on our updated minimum flying speed of 40mph and resulting Reynold's numbers. The main goal was to maximize the lift-to-drag ratio while still meeting the design criteria. We determined that our maximum Reynold's number would be up to 500,000 given our required maximum speed of 80 miles per hour and a chord length of 170 mm which allowed us to narrow down our selection of airfoils. Using airfoiltools.com and our MATLAB calculations we were able to select a new airfoil, the NACA 4412, that maximizes lift to draft ratio but also increases our range. This airfoil has a max thickness of 12% at 30% of the chord length with and a maximum camber of 4% at 40% of the chord length. Also, this airfoil has a 45:1 glide ratio which enables our UAV to have increased gliding distance to make a safe landing away from the public in the event of a power failure.

A foam cutting hot wire is a taut wire that uses electrical current to increase the temperature of the wire, which allows us to melt through the foam. By tracing an outline of our airfoil, we were able to cut out our main wing. Using a simple device such as a foam cutter allowed for simple and quick manufacturing for critical parts of the aircraft such as wings, fuselage, and tails.