The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Design Build Fly competition (DBF) is an international fixed-wing RC aircraft engineering and flying competition at the university level. Around August to September every year, the regulations of a new season designate a set of missions and requirements for an airplane, and the teams begin their development of their design. Each team must submit their proposal in October and place within the top 110 in order to qualify for the competition. The teams that qualified will continue to design, manufacture, and test their airplane, to then submit a design report in the following February, documenting their complete engineering process on the airplane. The season reaches its climax at the fly-off in April: every qualified team brings their aircraft to the field and performs the missions in front of the judges.
The design report score of the teams determine the order to perform the missions, and the teams will attempt to complete every mission within the three-and-a-half-day event. If a team were to fail a mission, they need to wait for all other teams to have made their attempt before trying again, and they may not complete every mission before the end of the event, causing severe damage to their final results. In the end, the overall competition score is the design report score multiplied by the total mission score, and the team with the best competition score becomes the winner, with the top 3 receiving prize money, and top 10 receiving recognition at the award ceremony.
In the 2021-22 season, Design Build Fly at the University of Washington (DBF UW) and T-Motor first became partners to compete in the DBF competition. It was the first in-person competition since 2019, and the first in-person competition to allow lithium-chemistry propulsion batteries. The rules called for a transport airplane that delivers syringes and vaccine packages, with the two missions demanding delivery of syringes as fast as possible, and to land-and-deploy a vaccine package every lap. DBF UW’s competition airplane, the UW-22 “Albatross”, was powered by two AT4130 motors, spinning 20x13 propellers to maximize takeoff weight and cruise efficiency. The team achieved 9th out of 97 participants, and the “Albatross” was the most competitive twin-engine airplane in the vaccine deployment mission.
DBF UW and T-Motor continued their partnership for the 2022-23 season. Electronic warfare was the theme of the year, requiring the airplane to fly their electronics package for as many laps as possible, and to fly with their antenna as fast as possible. As the team scaled to 8S power systems, DBF UW employed T-Motor’s tailored engineering services for the first time: the AT4140 400KV motor was co-developed to power the UW-23 “Sailfin” with a single-engine configuration and spinning a 17x12 propeller. As a result, DBF UW achieved 5th out of 99 teams at fly-off, the highest ever finish in the team’s history.
Most recently, the 2023-24 competition designated a multi-role civilian transport: delivering a patient and a medical team as fast as possible, and ferrying as many passengers and as many laps as possible. The passenger mission also rewarded efficiency, where a smaller energy battery would score more points. With these tasks, DBF UW and T-Motor increased their collaboration to configure the most powerful and efficient propulsion system. As the team upgraded to a new 12S system, T-Motor conducted a wide variety of lab tests and provided DBF UW with the data to pick the best candidates. Next, extensive wind tunnel tests with the motors and propellers were completed by DBF UW, with feedback given to T-Motor to evaluate additional options. After multiple iterations and integrated analysis with aerodynamics, the AT7215 270KV motor spinning a 15x14x3 propeller in a single-engine configuration was selected for the UW-24 “Orca”, producing more than 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of static thrust at 3.4kW, and powering the “Orca” to speeds above 160 kph (100 mph). After an intense battle at competition, DBF UW achieved 3rd out of 107 teams, the first podium finish in the team and the partnership’s history.
With the 2024-25 season about to begin, DBF UW looks to continue the momentum with T-Motor and produce another competitive airplane that will challenge for victory.
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