My favorite class right now is AME 261, Flight Mechanics. As the class is coming to an end, we were just assigned a group design project. The project is based on AIAAs yearly design project. Every year the project changes its requirements, missions, and design specifications. This year our project is to design a Supersonic UAV Bomber! The project is incredibly relevant to what the military is aiming to achieve right now. The aircraft we design must complete a series of missions such as travel certain distances at supersonic speeds, complete various turns, and drop payloads at different speeds and altitudes. All of the missions tie in everything we’ve learned throughout the semester, and finally sitting down and attacking this project has really helped me get a firm understand of all of the aircraft performance equations.
One of my favorite qualities of USC, is the collaborative environment, and this project is one of the most collaborative projects I’ve had to do so far. Every aspect of an aircraft effects different performance features within the aircraft and our group must constant work together and be in communication with each other. Our group separated different parts of the aircraft and different parts of the mission for each person to do in order to design our plane, and doing this has taught me how to collaborate with a group, and communicates with team members on achieving a final goal!
[author title=”Author” author_id=””]