Engineering Projects/FanWing
Team Members[edit | edit source]
Idea[edit | edit source]
Build a fanwing aircraft. Also called "spinning wing." This is related to the "Magnus effect" which is related to the "Coanda effect". Starting point may be this Magnus demonstration (youtube video link). It may result in a mobile, high altitude wind energy generation blimp (youtube again).
Story[edit | edit source]
Aviators is a continuation of the _MWE project. We set out to continue and finish the construction of the fanwing. The first priority was to finish the body and wings of the fanwing. We split the task evenly among each group member. The first two weeks were spent strategising where the motor of the fanwing would go.We decided to place the motor on the middle section of the fanwing.To do this, Eric came up with the idea to cut slits of balsa wood and conjoin them to the bottom portion of the Styrofoam body. Waleed and Mirza decided to tackle this task by cutting,sanding, and gluing the balsa wood slits along the bottom the the V shaped body.
The project manager spoke to us about our design and that not much progress was made on the fanwing. We took the advise into consideration and came up with the tough choice of scrapping our previous design and rebuilding anew.
Waleed proposed the idea of using and old styrofoam plane model and creating a new squirrel cage proportional to the size of the body.
Divided up tasks:
Mirza: Build Squirrel Cage
Waleed: Build Body
Eric: Construct Blades
We researched center of gravity of a plane. It lies in the wings.
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/acg.html