Mission Log
We’re excited to announce that Full Speed Ahead (FSA, www.fullspeedahead.com) has offered to sponsor our project! We are going to be using several different bicycle components in our helicopter, for example a headset at each rotor acting as a thrust bearing. These parts need to be very durable, but at the same time as light as possible. FSA’s high performance and lightweight integrated headsets are some of the best on the market, and we can’t wait to use them!
Thanks for your support so far, each and every one of our backers has been crucial for getting to our current state! Today we blew by 50%, what an awesome day it was!
Things are in full-swing at our workspace at the Great Lakes Gliding Club in Tottenham! We”ve been making carbon fiber tubes for the rotor structure at a rate of nearly one a day, now that the tooling is finished! We”re also manufacturing the rotor ribs at a breakneck pace, they”re each a work of art. By the end of the week, we will be putting rotors together in assembly-line fashion!
Today there was much rejoicing as we hit a very significant milestone: under a load of roughly 2000 lbs we pulled our first test spar off it's aluminum mandrel
Recently, lots of testing has been conducted here at the barn. This process is necessary to ensure the project's success since it is used to verify our computer modeling and give us firsthand experience on our construction processes. Much of the testing aims to ensure components are not under designed or over designed and to optimize our manufacturing techniques in order to get flying as soon as possible.
This past weekend, the UofT Human Powered Vehicle Design Team was in Clarkston, Michigan at the Waterford Hills racing track. We were competing in the oldest human powered vehicle event in North America. The weekend was filled with sprints, hill climbs, time trials, and all sorts of fun races. We ended up placing first and second in the 200-foot sprints with Trefor clocking in at 72 km/h!
We've received the tapered aluminum section of our spar mandrel from a flagpole and lighting manufacturer. The mandrel is a straight length of tube around which we”ll wrap prepreg carbon fibre (carbon fiber tape pre-impregnated with epoxy resin). The carbon/mandrel combination is then cooked in a long custom-made oven to produce our rotor spars.
We've just posted on YouTube our video of Week 1″s move up to Tottenham, directed by Aidan Muller. It chronicles the team”s epic journey from the Human-Powered Vehicle Design Team”s space downtown, up to the Danforth, across to Mississauga, Oakville, and then up to Tottenham. Along the way we accumulate lots of furniture, “stuff”, and bikes. Especially bikes! Keep an eye out for many more video blog entries like this one, Enjoy!
Today, Calvin and I finished up the electronic controls for the oven. We set up an Arduino microcontroller and with a few relays we're ready to automate the heating process. We even have an awesome LCD display. Later on in the week, we'll be cooking some spars!
Today we had our first workday at the barn! Yesterday, the team moved from various locations in the GTA up to our new home in Tottenham.
The time has come: this Monday we'll be moving up to Tottenham to begin construction on the helicopter!
Our goal going into the summer was to have the rotors fully-designed so that the team could immediately begin what will become an assembly line of massive lightweight blades. The design of the rotors has been done with custom aerodynamic and structural optimizer. The model takes into account the weight, stiffness and failure properties of the primary structural elements when finding an optimum solution.
This past weekend The U of T Human-Powered Vehicle Design Team”s bike “Bluenose” took 4th-Place Overall at the 2012 ASME Human-Powered Vehicle Challenge East, with members of AeroVelo an integral part of the team! This was a heated competition with field of 32 high-caliber contenders.
