A MESSAGE
Over the past few years, our team has worked to grow a solid foundation to enter the AIAA Design Build Fly Competition. Building on the knowledge of previous teams, we are confident that this year will be the inception of Santa Clara University as a respected competitor in the community.
Our current team is highly motivated and ready to compete in Arizona, where we’ll face off against some of the world’s top engineering schools. With your support, we could secure the funding needed to complete our airplane production and cover travel expenses, ensuring our entire team has the opportunity to see our hard work in action.
We would be honored to form a partnership with your esteemed company, which would enable us to represent Santa Clara University with pride and compete at the highest level.
Thank you for your consideration, and we look forward to the opportunity of working with you on this exciting journey!
Sincerely,
Derek Nease
Team Lead
DESIGN
BUILD
FLY
DBF stands for Design, Build, Fly, which is an annual student engineering competition. Each year, over 100 collegiate student teams from around the world compete to develop the best performance radio-controlled airplane under the imposed constraints. The competition is hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
Website: https://www.aiaa.org/dbf
The Aerodynamics team is dedicated to the external aspects of the aircraft's design. This includes flight performance calculations, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, stability analysis, and propulsion. The end goal is to ensure the aircraft meets all performance criteria set by the competition.
The Structures team is focused on the strength and weight aspect of the aircraft. This involves finite element analysis (FEA), and design for manufacturing (DFM) considerations to ensure a robust, lightweight, and easily-assembled design. The Structures team will work in parallel with the Aerodynamics team to effectively achieve the desired form factor.
PASSIONATE ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Our mission is to kickstart SCU's presence in intercollegiate engineering competitions by excelling in DBF. In doing this, we also hope to develop a cutting-edge vehicle by combining traditional techniques from the RC hobby with additive manufacturing techniques and composites to achieve a more aerodynamic and structurally efficient design than is typical for a DBF aircraft.
Until now, Santa Clara University's DBF team has existed as a senior design group developing aircraft according to the competition's rules. While we have yet to participate in the competition, our team has successfully built and flown multiple aircraft for different missions. We hope to raise enough funding for the 2025 season to compete onsite for the first time in our school's history.
