M-Fly Student Project Team

M-Fly is an aircraft design team that designs, builds, tests, and flies three different aircraft for the SAE and SUAS Aircraft Design Competitions. The process begins with the design phase in the summer and fall semester, followed by the build and test phase in the winter semester in preparation for competition in late spring. The entire process is student-driven, with occasional design reviews where they can get feedback from alumni and faculty.

M-Fly is split into three different “Classes” representing the three different aircraft, competitions they compete in, and missions they perform. The Hi-Lift Class competes in the SAE Regular class competition which requires a high-lifting aircraft that aims to carry as much payload as possible, in the form of two-liter water bottles, with a restricted takeoff distance. Advanced Class competes in the SAE Advanced competition and builds a mother plane that autonomously delivers a payload. Finally, the Autonomous Class competes in the SUAS Autonomous competition which requires an endurance aircraft that flies autonomously through waypoints detecting shapes and targets on the ground to drop water bottle payloads.

These mission requirements provide complicated design challenges to M-Fly’s members and encourages them to explore all aspects of the aircraft design space in order to create the optimal aircraft. Through this, they get exposure to all different aspects of the aircraft design process through the different subteams, including aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, hardware, software, and manufacturing. This allows students of many different majors to apply the skills they have learned in their classes to actual design problems. Aerospace students will see how the aerodynamics they learned in AEROSP 325 applies to actual wing design, mechanical engineering students get to CAD different components and analyze them through FEA, while EECS students get to design the circuitry and write the software that allows to aircraft to control and deploy payload. There are also many things to be learned that are not done in typical classes, such as wood and composite manufacturing.

Members are able to get direct, hands-on experience in the entire process, from preliminary sketches to flight tests of the actual completed aircraft, all culminating in a trip to the actual competition. The skills that they gain through this process and the experience make our members ready for careers in industry, as highlighted through our interactions with major industry sponsors that both aid M-Fly through this process and come to our workspace specifically to recruit from our team.