The Fall and Winter Quarter for Triton UAS had many notable pieces of development for our teams in the face of setbacks caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Here is an update on what we’ve been working on and what our teams will be up to in the coming Spring Quarter.

Airframe Team

The airframe team has made developments into the aircraft design optimization program, creating an initial architecture for the aircraft design optimization code and initial architecture for a module that optimizes the tail boom length, horizontal, and vertical stabilizer areas as well as successfully implementing it into the overall optimization program. Further development of the optimization program includes an implementation of a finite derivative based iteration for the wing area and a method that uses the min drag equation to solve for velocity and wing area. The team also wrote a series of functions utilizing MATLAB to perform composite structural analysis according to the classical laminate plate theory, as well as utilizing composite layup ply orientation optimization. SolidWorks was used to create a CAD model of a potential plane design to run a simulation on with Ansys Fluent in order to benchmark the output of the aircraft design optimization program, and further research was done on how to model the loading on a sandwich structure spar.

Despite the 2021 AUVSI SUAS Competition being cancelled, the Technical Design Papers will still be submitted and assessed. Triton UAS has completed the February 15th, 2021 deadline and our Technical Design Paper, which is available for viewing below.

Direct Link

In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the 2021 AUVSI SUAS Competition has been cancelled. Moving forward, Triton UAS will continue operations remotely and work towards establishing a technical foundation to be utilized in the future 2021–2022 season.

Although our normal method of operations has incurred setbacks due to the pandemic, Triton UAS has continued to achieve internal and external goals of development and education. Our 2020–2021 Technical Design Paper has been completed and published, detailing our efforts and design innovations we incorporated into our flight platform this season. Proceeding this, we will also begin development and work towards a new Technical Design Paper overviewing a new flight platform that will be utilized in the next season. A more in-depth recap of our progress this year can be found in another post on our blog.

Triton UAS entered the 2019–2020 academic year with multiple important goals to achieve, related to both administrative and technical aspects of our organization. Although at the end of the academic year we were unable to attend the annual AUVSI SUAS Competition due its cancellation in response to COVID-19, Triton UAS was still capable of accomplishing several of the goals set out at the beginning of the year.

General

One of the first goals and achievements of our year was successfully transitioning some of our members to fulfill leads positions in our subteams. We also officially established a business team to help with managing Triton UAS’ administrative tasks such as outreach, sponsorship, and finances. With the business team operational, the other subteams could focus on their respective technical goals related to the project.