Niek Beckers
The title of this article covers it all; everybody who has come in contact with an air- or spacecraft immediately loves it. It is certainly the case for the students of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. I would like to give you an impression of our faculty; covering its students, facilities and student projects.
Educating more than 1,800 students and having 228 staff members and 91 PhD students, the faculty is one of the largest faculties entirely devoted to Aerospace Engineering of Delft University of Technology. Every year, approximately 400 freshmen enroll for the study and this figure is growing by the year! Moreover, the faculty is strongly internationally oriented. An increasing number of Aerospace Engineering students studies abroad for a semester, participates in an internship or conducts the graduation project in a foreign company. Thanks to the many partnerships all over the world, students can go almost anywhere. A partnership even exists with Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
Besides the three year bachelor programme, the faculty offers several specific educational programmes for the master degree, ranging from aerodynamics to dynamics and control of aerospace vehicles and space engineering. These master programmes aim to educate the student to the typical ‘Delft Engineer’, an engineer that has a broad knowledge and experience in working in teams.
Facilities
The faculty has a large variety of facilities for eductional and research purposes. These facilities are used for students throughout the total bachelor and master curriculum. Even in the first year, the students will make use of these facilities, which will be elaborated more lateron. As you can imagine, this practical experience really gives students an idea of how, for instance, their calculations on a centre wing box work in 'the real world'.One of the most prestiguous facilities is the SIMONA flight simulator. This is a six-degrees-of-freedom simulator which is built by several groups of the university. In this unique simulator, research is done with respect to new flight control algorithms or man-machine interactions. And therein lies one of the unique points of SIMONA; it has a glass cockpit which can be programmed to the researchers' wishes: It can resemble a large airliner or a small helicopter. Researches such as the ‘Tunnel in the Sky’, in which a tunnel is projected for the pilot through which he needs to fly, are conducted in SIMONA.
Next to the simulator, the faculty has, in cooperation with the Dutch Aerospace Laboratory, a Cessna Citation II ‘Flying Classroom’. In the second and third year, two test flights are conducted for students, in which they assess several Eigen-modes of the aircraft, as well as a parabolic flight, an unforgettable zero-g experience!
The students can also make use of a cleanroom, which is located in the faculty. In this cleanroom, a mini-satellite has been recently built by students, and later launched. The cleanroom is a valuable asset in order to give students a hands-on experience in building space systems.
Moreover, we have several wind tunnels, ranged from a large open-jet wind tunnel to a hypersonic wind tunnel and an aircraft hangar, in which a large collection of aircraft parts is used for education. Students can have a look at how some structural pieces are made by the aircraft manufacturer. Amongst others, the collection consists of an F-16 ‘Fighting Falcon’, an F-104 ‘Starfighter’ and several pieces of Fokker-27 Friendship and Fokker-100, aircraft developed and built by the bankrupt Dutch aircraft manufacturer Fokker. As you may know, Fokker was one of the first manufacturers to design aircraft with bonded instead of riveted parts, for example parts of the Fokker-50 turboprop wing, which was ahead of its time in 1985.
The aircraft hangar also houses lots of equipment for material manufacturing and testing. Recently, a specialised composites lab has been opened, providing excellent facilities for developing composite structures or fibre metal laminates. For instance GLARE, used for the upper fuselage part of the Airbus A380, was developed at the Aerospace Engineering faculty
Student projects
Students use the facilities mainly for education purposes, but they can also be used for student projects. In order to give an idea in which branches these projects are, a short overview of a selection of projects is given in the next section.The faculty has several engineering projects started and led by students. On April 28, 2008 the first Dutch university satellite was launched. This satellite was built to a large extent by master students in the faculty's cleanroom, and carries three experimental subsystems on board, amongst which are ultra thin solar cells.
At the moment, a team is developing a micro aerial vehicle (MAV), called Delfly. This MAV, using flapping wings in order to fly, is on the first hand designed by students. The first Delfly had a wingspan of approximately 20 cm; the next generation will be scaled down to about five centimetres! Eventually, the aim of Delfly is to be used for rescue operations or espionage.
At the moment, students are working on a similar project: the RoboSwift. This MAV has the appearance of a swift and is used for crowd surveillance. The swift is known for its very efficient wings, which it transforms for different types of flight. The RoboSwift also has mechanical morphing wings, which can be transformed symmetrically as well as asymmetrically, for steering.
The faculty also has two main projects focused on sustainability. The first is Eco-Runner Team Delft. This team is building a hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered car, planned to compete in the Shell Eco-Marathons, in which cars try to drive as much distance as possible with one litre of fuel equivalent. The team uses ultra light constructions, as well as high efficiency components and aerodynamic design. This year, they are aiming at a distance of 1,800 kilometers.
The other sustainability project is the Nuna solar car, which participates in the Panasonic World Solar Challenge. This is a 3,000 kilometre long race for solar powered cars across Australia. Many universities participate, but Delft University of Technology has won the World Solar Race this year for the fourth time in a row!
The key to success is, obviously next to the efficient design and usage of efficient components, the team which builds the Nuna solar car. It is a team of students from different faculties of Delft University of Technology which sacrifices an entire year of their study to the Nuna, designing it every year from scratch, complying with the ever changing rules of the challenge organisation. This year, the cars had to have an upright seating position for the driver, affecting the aerodynamic design dramatically. Eventually, the solar cars will have to have the same function as the cars we know today.
Aerospace Engineering is a fantastic study, not only due to the passion for flying, but also for the extreme challenges which lie ahead of us. As an aerospace engineer, you are broadly educated and wanted in all sorts of industries. Studying aerospace engineering in Delft gives us, as students, the possibility to gather knowledge, but also to participate in extracurricular activities, such as student projects. The fact that the faculty offers her research facilities and highly supports these projects is very motivating. The implementation of hands-on experience keeps aerospace engineering tangible, instead of only theoretical modeling and engineering. After all, we do it all for the passion for everything that flies.
Niek Beckers is an Aerospace Engineering student at the Delft University of Technology.
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