FOLDABLE WING RC PLANE

AEROMODELLING CLUB IITK

PROJECT MEMBERS
ANKITA MITTAL JEETESH AGRAWAL KRATIKA AGRAWAL PRATEEK SAZAWAL RAVINDRA DHAMA VIKAS RANA

ankitami@iitk.ac.in jeetesh@iitk.ac.in kratika@iitk.ac.in sazawal@iitk.ac.in dhama@iitk.ac.in ranav@iitk.ac.in

INTRODUCTION

FOLDABLE WING IS A SIMPLE WING WITH ITS OUTER PARTS FOLDING.IT REQUIRES SOME SPECIFIC MECHANISM TO FOLD THE WINGS.IT IS MADE OF BALSA WOOD AND BALSA PLY AND USED TO GIVE THE PLANE ITS REQUIRED LIFT.

AIM AND OBJECTIVE

This report is about a remote controlled plane (RC plane) with foldable wings and this action of folding will also be remote controlled. The basic aim behind folding the wings is that it can be used both as a car and an airplane. The most important aspect of this kind of plane is that this can serve as a cheaper version of a Plane Car.

AIM AND OBJECTIVE

The basic plan would be to make first a simple RC plane at first with partitions in each wing then we make use of hinges and springs to make the wings fold.

DIFFICULTIES FACED

FINDING A SUITABLE PROBLEM

STATEMENT First of all the problem must be feasible. Secondly it must give you the maximum chance to learn. Keeping these two points in mind we decided to go for this model.

HOW TO FOLD THE WING

The most challenging aspect of the project is to find a suitable mechanism to fold the wing. For this several methods were first tried on the previous years models available with the club. Stability of the wing in air was a very critical issue.

DIFFERENT MECHANISMS TRIED

To fold the wing using a servo alone. This was not possible since the servo could not take this much of load. Then we tried it with a hinge. The problem here was that of the fact that the servo might loose control at any time and one can not be very sure.

DIFFERENT MECHANISMS TRIED

Then keeping these things in mind we decided to use a rod in combination with the hinge. In this case we will have to synchronize the movement of the hinge and the rod. The rod will provide stability and will give proper strength. But, it was a very difficult task to synchronize the movement of the hinge and the rod.

DIFFERENT MECHANISMS TRIED

So, we finally tried to modify the servo in such a way that with a small movement of the servo we could achieve a greater change in the angle by which the wing moves. For this we used a piece of ply to make the Even, fiber glass would have worked well for this purpose, but due to lack of availability we couldnt use it.

MAKING WING
Along with that we were working on the wing. We needed to use a software DESIGNFOIL to decide upon the airfoil shape and size. Once this was done we had to make the wing. Since our project was a folding wing we had to be extremely careful while assembling and joining the different airfoils.

MAKING WING
Thick balsa had to be used at the end of every segment. A lot of support was provided to the wing using stringers. Keeping in mind the complexities of the wing, we decided to keep it simple and hence we did not provided any dihedral angle.

AIRFOIL SPECIFICATIONS
Airfoil name NACA-2515-63 Chord length 26 cm Angle of attack 3 degrees Lift 0.667 Drag 0.0079 Lift to drag ratio 84.4 Coefficient of lift 0.667

POSITION OF AILERONS
Generally, in a wing on the trailing edge we provide with flaps and ailerons. The flaps are near to the fuselage and the ailerons are near the wing tips. This is done so that the ailerons work effectively. Since the ailerons work on the principle of torque.

POSITION OF AILERONS
However in our project since the wing is a folding one so we can not have either flap or aileron on the part near the wing tip. Since ailerons are vital to an aircrafts movement we placed only ailerons on the wing. We kept the aileron a bit bigger in our case keeping in mind that it is placed near the fuselage ( generally ailerons are kept far from fuselage so as to produce large torque )

WING SPECIFICATIONS
Wing span = 182 cm Chord Length = 26 cm Dihedral angle = 0 degrees Area of wing = 182*26 cm2 = 4732 cm2 Aspect ratio = 7

Length of part 2= Length of part 3 = 45.5 cm Length of part 1 = Length of part 4 = 45.5 cm

AILERON SPECIFICATIONS
Length of aileron = 40 cm. Breadth of aileron = 5 cm. The edges of the aileron were minimize the drag effect.

rounded to

MAKING TAIL
Once different parts of the wing were made, we moved on to the tail. One point to be kept in mind while making the elevator and rudder is that their area too is to be included in the area of the tail and vertical stabilizer respectively.

HORIZONTAL TAIL SPECIFICATIONS

The maximum length between base and its topmost portion is 14.5 cm. The minimum distance is 8 cm. The length of the base is 64.5 cm. The tail was inclined at a negative angle of 3 degrees with respect to the fuselage.

VERTICAL STABILIZER
It was made trapezium shaped with the following specifications. Height = 29.3cm Length of two parallel sides were 2 cm and 23 cm.

RUDDER SPECIFICATIONS
Length = 78 cm Breadth = 7 cm Its cross section was airfoil shaped so as to minimize the drag .

FUSELAGE
We went for an simple fuselage design. Our project was meant to be a high wing plane since we do not know flying ( high wing planes have higher stability,so they are recommended for beginners) Generally length of a typical fuselage is 70-90% of the wing span. In this case it is 82.5%. Length of fuselage being 150 cm.

FUSELAGE
After making it we made the base. We used 3 mm ply to make this basic structure of the fuselage. Hence, we need to impart strength to the fuselage at several places. Depending on the strength needed at several places we used single or multi layers of 6 mm balsa wood or ply.

FUSELAGE
In an aircraft reliability is a very important issue. Hence the strength of the plane is a very critical issue and needed to be handled carefully.

FUSELAGE
To maintain the proper aerodynamic shape of the fuselage several scanners were set in the hind section of the fuselage. Between the scanners trusses were made. Similarly on the base we made trusses. At some places 6 mm balsa wood was also used to give strength.

FUSELAGE
Proper strength must be there because it must not break due to the vibrations of engine. Also, the part where Landing Gear have to be mounted must be very strong, so that it can take up the vibrations at the time of landing. These parts were made using double layers of 6 mm ply.

FUSELAGE
For the landing gear a similar piece of ply was attached at the bottom of the fuselage so as to fix it in its proper place. And then we tightened it using nuts and bolts. We used cycle spokes as wires to connect servos to different parts of the plane like ailerons, rudder, elevator. To the rudder also a landing gear was attached to ensure the proper landing and take off.

FUEL TANK
We used a mixture of methanol and castor oil. Level of fuel tank must match the oil input valve.

FINDING THE POSITION OF WING

One of the most important thing is to find a suitable position for the wing. For if the centre of gravity of the entire system is not in between the aerodynamic centre and the tail then the plane will not be stable. We did not have exact data required for the calculations.

FINDING THE POSITION OF WING

What we did then was to try to keep the position of centre of gravity at a distance of 0.1c to 0.2c from the aerodynamic centre. Here c is the chord length. The aerodynamic centre is located at a distance of 0.25c (approximately) from the leading edge of the wing for subsonic speeds.

FINDING THE POSITION OF WING

The centre of pressure is the position where actually the total force vector is located. But in most of the practical cases aerodynamic centre is used for calculation purposes.

FIXING WING
The wing is attached to the fuselage with the help of thin rubber tubes. With this we can separate the two parts and change the position of the wing as per the requirements. Like we can use a engine of better capacity. But with that the weight will increase and so the position of centre of gravity will vary. So, we will have to readjust the wings position.

FINALLY FLYING..

We need to use a five channel transmitter as against the normal four channel transmitter. Since in our case we have used an additional servo for folding the wing.

For more information visit our website http://students.iitk.ac.in/aeromodelling

Contact
Jeetesh Agrawal Kratika Agrawal Tushar Sikroria

jeetesh@iitk.ac.in kratika@iitk.ac.in sikroria@iitk.ac.in