Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
10
Table of content
Summary 3
Introduction 4
Engine connection 12
Wing connection 16
Material selection 18
Vacuuming forming 22
Conclusion 29
Recommendation 30
Reference 32
Appendix 33
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SUMMARY
The first part of the report is concentrated on UAV fuselage design. It consists three
The fuselage shape must be such that separation is avoided when possible. That’s
where the aerodynamics of the fuselage design’s core. By designing the ratio and
shape of the UAV nose and tail cone, the ultimate goal is to reduce as much drag as
possible and provide lifts. We must be convinced that a manoeuvre always involves
acceleration, turning, deceleration, all of which will put the UAV under high loads,
that’s why the stress analysis is so important here. By referring to the thorough stress
analysis, theoretically the UAV is safe to fly under any conditions. Material is always
so important for aircrafts that in reality, all the aircrafts has been built by most
molybdenum, etc. For this UAV design, no much vibration, corrosion, noise would
be taken into consideration. What’s more, the stress involved is not as high as the real
commercial aircraft, so cheaper and realistic materials should be studied. In fact, after
a comprehensive study about wood, Styrofoam, plastics, steel and carbon fibers, PVC
forming and its implementation in this UAV fuselage design. Some advantages and
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Vacuum forming is one of the methods using thermoforming treatment. Besides the
fact that vacuum forming can make exact shape as the mould, it also take less pain to
build the station and take less time to produce one piece of prototype. However,
several disadvantages exist. The whole process should been monitored very carefully
since toxic gas would be produced if the plastic is overheated. Also in lab scale, it is
always very hard to build a station large enough for the overall design and the
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1. INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this project is to design and manufacture an Unmanned Air Vehicle
(UAV). As a group project, it requires four students to design and/or build wings,
fuselage, engine and optimization. This report is the final report for the fuselage
There are numerous interesting books on the history of aircraft development. This
section contains a few additional notes relating especially to the history of aircraft
aerodynamics along with links to several excellent web sites. (Refer to appendix 1).
However, there are very few topics relating to UAV design and manufacture. This
order to achieve the design goal, besides the wing and propulsion, the fuselage gives
great contribution as well. The following parts have two main sections: UAV
fuselage design and manufacture. In the design part, aerodynamics designs including
nose and tail cone together with stress analysis and material selection are elaborated.
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2. LITERATURE REVIEW
A search for “nose fineness ratio” produced 1240 journals from Engineering Village
and 480 from Web of Science. Further search for “aerodynamic nose fineness ratio”
produced 188 from Engineering Village. 80 out of these 188 journals have been
They indicated that with comparison and analysis of the results of the five different
aerodynamic configuration was drawn. When the other parameters are the same, the
aerodynamic drag and lift decrease with the length of the streamlined nose shapes
extending; when the length of the streamlined nose shapes is almost the same, the
aerodynamic drag of the front car of the protruding longitudinal profile is less than
that of the concave, while that of the rear car is the contrary; the aerodynamic drag of
the middle car varies within a small range, the aerodynamic lift of the rear car is
greater than that of the front one; and the total aerodynamic lift of the three cars of the
Ota, Terukazu (1983) worked on the project of nose shape effects on turbulence in
the separated and reattached flow over blunt flat plates. He found that the nose shape
has a strong influence on the turbulence features in the separated and reattached
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Goodson, K. W (1958) wrote of journal named Effect of Nose Length, Fuselage
Two Complete Models at High Subsonic Speeds. He discovered that the stability for
all model configurations showed substantially the same variation with changes in
forebody area moment. The forebody changes did not alter the angle of attack at
which an unstable break occurred in the moment contribution of the T-tail but did
A search for “vacuum forming” produced 820 journals from Engineering Village and
210 from Web of Science. 40 out of these 1130 journals have been reviewed. Below
Campo, E. Alfredo (2008) wrote in his journal “Polymeric Materials and Properties”
that all PVC compounds require heat stabilizers to allow processing without
degrading and discoloring the polymer. Plasticizers are added to increase the
flexibility of the compound. They can also improve the heat stability or improve the
flame retardancy of the compound. Fillers are used to reduce the cost, improve
industry. PVC is popular because of its excellent impact, wear, chemical, and UV
resistance. PVC is used in a large variety of end products such as flooring, garage
doors, windows frames and profiles, siding, tubing, and connectors. These products
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are commonly available in standard sizes and shapes, low cost, and easy to work with
Fagence, S.W. and Garvin, W.Barry (1973) discussed the machines and their
stretching, etc); mold design; and mold cooling in the large piece of vacuum forming
process. He also stated that a definition of 'large sheet' could be a 'sheet in excess of
16 sq. ft'.
although several materials can be used for the mold, for instance epoxies and silicone
rubber, metal forms were mostly used, particularly for long production needs.
Decoration and joining by adhesive bonding and HF welding of PVC vacuum formed
common stabilizers - on twin-screw extruders was widely accepted quite some time
ago. The more recent development in the sector of PVC film for food packaging has
called the attention to compact extrusion lines with small sized calenders. Here,
however, single-screw and planetary roller extruders with sheering dies rather than
profitability of these techniques as well as the quality of the finished products, the
extruders are fitted with vacuum-assisted feed hoppers. Apart from air and moisture,
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the vacuum technology from which the closed system of the vacuum type twin-
hopper venting unit with the extruder has been derived, also permits the removal of
other excess gases and vapors and, not last, the residual VC content from the PVC
melt.
Ian C. McNeill, Livia Memetea and William J. Cole (1995) discovered in their
study of “products of PVC thermal degradation” that PVC shows two stages of
degradation: during the first stage, between 200 and 360 °C, mainly HCl and benzene
and very little alkyl aromatic or condensed ring aromatic hydrocarbons are formed. It
was evaluated that 15% of the polygene generates benzene, the main part
an aliphatic matrix are formed. Alkyl aromatic and condensed ring aromatic
hydrocarbons are formed in the second stage of degradation, between 360 and 500
°C, when very little HCl and benzene are formed. In this stage the polymeric network
considered.
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3. UAV FUSELAGE DESIGN
structures. The overall dimensions of the fuselage affect the drag through several
factors. Hemida, Hassan and Krajnovic, Siniša (2010) Stated that fuselages with
smaller fineness ratios have less wetted area to enclose a given volume, but more
wetted area when the diameter and length of the cabin are fixed. The higher Reynolds
number and increased tail length generally lead to improved aerodynamics for long,
thin fuselages, at the expense of structural weight. Selection of the best layout
requires a detailed study of these trade-offs, but to start the design process, something
must be chosen. This is generally done by selecting a value not too different from
existing aircraft with similar requirements, for which such a detailed study has
presumably been done. In the absence of such guidance, one selects an initial layout
In this UAV fuselage design, the payload requires a fuselage being able to hold a
camera, batteries, servo, and targeting ball. Except the payload requirement, other
considerations are:
• structural support for wing and tail forces acting in flight, which involves
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3.1. Aircraft Shape and Aerodynamics of Fuselage
The fuselage shape must be such that separation is avoided when possible. This
requires that the nose and tail cone fineness ratios be sufficiently large so that
The aircraft fineness ratios are defined as length divided by diameter, which including
In all of the following nose cone shape equations, L is the overall length of the nose
cone and R is the radius of the base of the nose cone. y is the radius at any point x,
as x varies from 0, at the tip of the nose cone, to L. The equations define the 2-
dimensional profile of the nose shape. The full body of revolution of the nose cone is
formed by rotating the profile around the centerline (C/L). Note that the equations
describe the 'perfect' shape; practical nose cones are often blunted or truncated for
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There are several shapes available: 3/4 Power, Cone, 1/2 Power, Tangent ogive,
Liu Tang-hong, Tian Hong-qi and Wang Cheng-yao (2006) wrote in journal
of the plane increases, the drag coefficient increase as well. Different type of fuselage
shape can give different drag coefficient as well. But as shown above, below Mach
number 0.5, the shape of the airplane does not give too much difference.
Except the shape of the fuselage, the nose and tail cone fineness ratio play an
important role in fuselage design as well. Below is a simulation graph: drag loss VS
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fineness ratio.
Not surprisingly, the elliptical shape has poorer performance than the other shapes,
but except from that, and perhaps the parabolic shape, the difference in apogee
between the other shapes is so small for the higher fineness ratios, that other criteria
may be taken into account when selecting the shape. A 2:1 fineness ratio may be
chosen over 3:1 for practical reasons. Also there are the thermal considerations in real
airplane consideration.
The profile of current designed shape is one-half of an ellipse, with the nose and tail
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R=4.5cm
L=18cm
In this UAV design, one of key factors in UAV fuselage shape design is the payload.
According to the payloads weights, centre of gravity as well as the attribution of the
different parts, the width, namely the aircraft lateral diameter is no less than 9cm. In
order to make sure the Centre of Gravity is behind the aerodynamic centre, which is
design to make sure of the aircraft stability and easily maneuverability, and based on
the fact that the tail of the plane is relatively high, the batteries and camera should be
put into the very front to counter the weight. As such, the nose should be designed so
as to have enough space to hold the payloads at the very front. That’s the main reason
of this design. Fineness ratio 2 is restricted by the overall length of the fuselage and
diameter of the fuselage. Any longer fuselage will increase the drag even more.
Besides all these considerations, the shape also depends on the manufacturability;
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3.1.2. Final UAV designed shape
The main function of this UAV fuselage is to protect the payloads during the flight
test and actually flying. So the priority of the design is to fulfill the payloads’
requirement.
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3.2. Aircraft Structure Analysis
The main concerns for this UAV design regarding to stress analysis are from
connections with engines and wings. The following are details of calculation for these
two parts.
M1=T*L1=6.87*0.04=0.275N.m.
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The equation for thin walled structure is as follow:
For this problem, since the section is symmetric about both y and z axis, Iyz=0.
𝑀𝑀𝑦𝑦 𝑧𝑧
Since Mz=0. So 𝜎𝜎𝑥𝑥 =
𝐼𝐼𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦
1
𝐼𝐼𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦 = ∗ 40 ∗ 53 = 417𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚4
12
Z=2.5mm
M=0.275N.m=275N.mm
10 6 𝑁𝑁
So 𝜎𝜎𝑥𝑥 =275*2.5/417=1.65N/mm^2=1.65× = 1.65𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀
𝑚𝑚 2
Γ=F/A=3.5×104 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃=0.035MPa
Mohr’s Circle
Let’s suppose we know all the stresses in the normal (x, y, z)-coordinate system.
When we shift the coordinate system, the normal stresses and the shear stresses
change. The way in which this occurs is described by Mohr’s circle. Mohr stated that
if you plot the direct stresses and the shear stresses, you would get a circle. Such a
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𝜎𝜎𝑥𝑥 = 1.65𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀𝑀. 𝜎𝜎𝑦𝑦 = 0. Γ=0.035MPa.
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In aircraft structure design, one of the most important factors is safety factor. Each
design of aircraft has its own V-n diagram. Here we use the diagram the same RV-9.
Since the airspeed is no more than 25 kts, a safety factor of 1.5 is given.
According to the calculation, the max stress is 2.48MPa=360 psi, is far smaller than
the upper yield point for steel, so this steel is safe to use.
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3.2.2. Wing Connection
Now we are going to calculate the structure stress due to wing loading. According to
Shaoming’s analysis, the max lift is 30N in total. Each wing contributes 15N. Since
there are two rods attached to each wing, the load for each rod is 7.5N. If the longer
rod can bear the loads, the shorter one can as well. We should calculate the longer
M2=7.5N*50mm=375N.mm r=5mm
𝑀𝑀𝑦𝑦 𝑧𝑧
𝜎𝜎𝑥𝑥 =
𝐼𝐼𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦
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The max normal stress is 1.9MPa. The max shear stress is 0.955MPa.
The max stress is far less than yield strength. So the aircraft structure is safe by using
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3.3. Material Selection for Fuselage
• Fracture toughness
Today, the main material used is aluminum alloys for all kinds of aircraft, which is
pure aluminum mixed with other metals to improve its strength. In the real world of
sandwich fuselages, double walls (skin with an interior panel), insulation blankets in
between the skin and the interior panels, application of damping improving visco-
elastic layers, application of piezo electric elements for active noise control, etc, are
designed and launched to strength the fuselage. Since the UAV does not need too
much strength, only the skin with basic holding structure would be enough.
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Below is a comparison of material property comparison for different kinds of possible
materials for aircraft fuselage, aluminum sheet, wood, Styrofoam, plastics, and
carbon fibers.
Considering all the factors listed at the beginning of this section, including stress
stress concentration, etc, plastics are the best choice, and vacuum forming method is
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3.3.2. Selection of Plastics
For the UAV fuselage, from all the possible plastics, PVC is chosen. It has strong,
tough thermoplastic with good transparency in thinner gauges, good chemical and fire
retardant properties and highly resistant to solvents. Thicker materials are rigid with
In the following table, a comparison of various plastics is listed, including PS, ABS,
PP, PE, PVC and PC. A scale from zero to three is given to each of the four
properties, heating time, cost, formability, and strength. For each material property,
four percentages are given, which are 10%, 10%, 40%, and 40% respectively. The
final scores are calculated for each plastic and we get PVC has the first position
10%
ABS 80 2 2 2 2.05 5
2.5
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1
PETG 60 1 3 2 2.40 2
PVC 60 3 3 2 2.60 1
PC 120 1 2 3 2.15 4
0.5
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4. UAV Fuselage Manufacture
The whole fuselage requires vacuuming forming as a tool to manufacture two parts:
forming has generally been promoted as a ‘dark art’ and best left to companies with
sophisticated processing equipment that is able to supply the facility and service. By
using this method, moulds, plastics, vacuum machine and heaters are commonly
being used.
In its simplest form the process consists essentially of inserting a thermoplastic sheet
in a cold state into the forming clamp area, heating it to the desired temperature either
with just a surface heater or with twin heaters and then raising a mould from below.
The trapped air is evacuated with the assistance of a vacuum system and once cooled
a reverse air supply is activated to release the plastic part from the mould.
Although this force is quite limited, about 15 PSI maximum, this is the most common
process used for high volume thin gage products. In this process the heated sheet is
placed over a cavity mold. Contact is made between the sheet and the mold creating a
seal. The air in the cavity is evacuated and atmospheric pressure forces the sheet
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against the contours of the cavity. Most vacuum forming machines include a surge
tank which is first evacuated so the forming can occur very quickly in the process.
The followings are some key dimensions of this vacuum forming stations with
pictures.
1mm
manufacturing
ratio 0.5mm
diameter
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4.1.1. Advantages
Firstly, by using vacuuming forming method, as shown below, we could make the
exact shape as the moulds, which is one of the key factors in this UAV design. Since
the design of the fuselage has very restricted requirements, there are only two
possible economic ways to do that: clamping and vacuum forming. For student lab
scale, it would be practical to design and build the vacuum forming station.
although there are some minor defects. The practical vacuum forming station is built
by a vacuum cleaner, vacuum table, oven, and a frame. Some other tools are being
used during the fabricating as well. The working station is shown below.
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Thirdly, it is not a very time-consuming process. Once the station is settled, the all
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4.1.2. Disadvantages and Solutions
Despite all these advantages about vacuuming forming process, there are some
Firstly, it is toxic if the plastics are being heated too much. The temperature plays a
crucial part here. The purpose of heating the plastics is to soft the plastics, not to melt
them. If the plastics are overly heated, it would be dangerous for the operator.
By experiments, the setup time for the oven to heat up to the desired temperature is 5
minutes. Then by different materials, heating time is different. (Refer to the appendix
for industrial heating time). For this lab experiments, 0.5mm and 1mm PVC are being
used for testing and manufacturing. The oven is set to 240 degrees for both two
materials, while 0.5mm PVC needs 1 minute to been heated to desire soft state and
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4.1.2.2. Non-Uniform Wall Thickness
depending on the amount of stretching that must occur to create the desired geometry.
There are many design rules as well as process variations to lessen the impact of
Drawing ratios include Aerial Draw Ratios, Linear Draw Ratios and Height-to-
Dimension Ratios. Each has advantages but is only grossly representative of sheet
thinning, however they can be excellent instructional tools for comparing part designs
and processes.
calculating the surface area of the formed part and dividing it by the surface area of
ADR = Surface area of the formed section / Surface area of the sheet used to form the
part
In this part design, the surface area of the formed section is half a ellipse plus the rest
of area.
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Surface
L=18cm, R=9cm. Area
S2=254cm^2
ADR=S1/S2=1.67
Maximum ADR’s are shown. This information is helpful to compare the stretching
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4.1.2.2.2. Linear Draw Ratio (LDR)
This the comparison of the length of a straight line drawn on the sheet before forming
as compared to the length of the same line after forming. Only the forming area is
For the special case where the minor axis is half the major axis, we can use:
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LINEAR DRAWRATIO(LDR)
ABS 3.4
Acrylic 2.1
HDPE 4.3
LDPE 4.5
PP 7.1
PVC 4.1
This ratio is simply the height of the formed part divided by the length of the greatest
opening of the part. The usefulness of this ratio is limited to simple symmetric parts
such as a drinking cup using straight vacuum forming process with a cavity mold.
H: D=9/18=0.5
PeterW. Klein (2009) stateD that the height-to-dimention ratio for PVC is 6.5. It
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4.1.2.3. Size of the Station
Thirdly, the manufacture process is always restricted by the size of the station. At
first, it would the size of the vacuum table that has to be enlarged. Then it follows the
frame, and lastly the oven. In fact, by trying different cutting machine of the mould,
at last, the original oven is finally practical. The required size for the fuselage is
13.5cm nose length plus 18cm tail cone length. The shrinking rate for this process is
1:1.5, which mean the effective working area of the plastics should be more than
47.25cm. It was not possible for the vacuum table, frame and the oven! As shown
below, the frame is designed to have only 25*20cm effective working area. Vacuum
table has 20*15cm effective working area, and the oven has 30*25 effective working
areas. In order to continue this project with this method, some modifications have
been made. In order to make the whole piece of nose and cone at one time, two
This method is chosen to manufacture the UAV fuselage, not because it is the
requirement of this project, but mainly, it is the only way to manufacture fuselage by
plastics using the ideal design. Despite the disadvantages, vacuum forming, as a
commonly used industrial process, provide a practical way to the fuselage into reality.
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5. CONCLUSION
This UAV fuselage design and manufacture report has two main parts. The fuselage
design focus on aerodynamics, stress analysis and material selection. And the
Based on several researches on nose and tail cone fineness ratio as well as shape of
fuselage, this UAV fuselage is designed as ellipsoid, as the nose and tail cone ratio as
1:2.
Stress is calculated on mainly the steel plate attached to the engine and the carbon
fibre rod attached to wings. The max stress in the plate and rod is far less than the
yield strength, in fact, only 10% of which. So the fuselage structure is safe to use
these materials.
After comparing the properties of wood, Styrofoam, carbon fibre, plastics, and so on,
PVC is finally chosen for the main fuselage skin. Due to the stress requirement, as
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6. RECOMMENDATION
Since this fuselage design is restricted by the payloads, the fineness ratio cannot be
bigger than 2. In the future, one can try to increase the fineness ratio and better
simple procedure and lab-accessibility. During the experiments, two main problems
arise. Not only the size of the station restricts the whole experiments for more than a
month, the toxic gas is another main issue here as well. In the future, for next batch of
students, the vacuum station should be designed in the way that can be altered,
especially the size of oven and the vacuum table. Students want to do some vacuum
forming experiments before setting up the station, can approach SDE department to
oven is not available in the market within the budget, one can consider the furnace
available in the impact lab locates at EA-01-01 or the material lab locates at E3-04-1.
For construction of the vacuum forming table, please refer to the video from
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5CGfoxnKaQ ,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhajk_IDTUo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGBRiYhxRTM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc_FZcGzYn0&feature=related
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One can refer to
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic604638.files/FormechVacuumGuide.pdf for
Another problem arises during the experiments is the toxic gas. Since the vacuum
forming process requires the plastics to be very soft before put onto the mould and
vacuum table, so the time and temperature control during the heating process is
crucial. In fact, it is very hard to control the heating time so as to eliminate the toxic
gas. One should take note of this in the experiments and try to use a mask or do these
Instead of using clay as the ray material for the moulds, one can take wood or
Styrofoam into account. By using turning for wood block or foam cutter for
In addition, besides vacuuming forming, stress analysis can be done using FEA.
During the design and experiment, it is inevitable that the models crashed. It
happened four times to this design. Also, during flight, accelerating and turning, the
structure would stand strong stress. If the material is wood or Styrofoam, it would be
necessary to use FEA to analysis the whole body FEA consists of a computer model
of a material or design that is stressed and analyzed for specific results. It is used in
new product design, and existing product refinement. In case of structural failure,
FEA may be used to help determine the design modifications to meet the new
condition.
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7. REFERENCE
Conf, pp123-125
21, n 3, p 30-33
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7. Breuer, Heinz (1977), “Importance of Vacuum Technology for Extrusion
5, p 233-240
influence of the nose shape and yaw angles on flow structures around
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APPENDIX 1 Historical Website about Aircraft Design
http://adg.stanford.edu/aa241/intro/history/history.html
http://www.boeing.com/history/
http://www.airbus.com/en/
http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/
http://spicerweb.org/chanute/Cha_index.aspx
http://www.wrightflyer.org/
http://www.aero-web.org/history/wright/first.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_aircraft_carrier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAV
http://adg.stanford.edu/aa241/AircraftDesign.html
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APPENDIX 2 Aircraft Fuselage Nose Shape
3/4 Power
Cone
1/2 Power
Tangent ogive
Parabolic
Ellipsoid
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APPENDIX 3
moulds
Final product
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APPENDIX 4 Failed Prototypes
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APPENDIX 6 Processes
Mould building
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Prepare the plastics
Temperature setting
240 degrees
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Turn on the vacuum cleaner; put the plastics on top of mould
Trimming-final product
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Assembly and paint
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