On Sept. 25, the Institute opened its Aircraft Prototyping Laboratory in the North Avenue Research Area. The 10,000 sq. ft. facility already maintains a collaboration with NASA to design, build, and fly an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) research aircraft that could one day regularly fly passengers through the skies of Atlanta
The laboratory is two stories and houses facilities that will be vital to produce a working, high-payload electric propulsion vehicle — an electric powertrain lab, a propulsion system test cell, an avionics lab, a composites fabrication area, and a high-bay integration space capable of housing at-scale prototypes.
“This door behind me was sized to fit the 20-foot wingspan of the [high-payload eVTOL] aircraft,” said Brian German, AE professor specializing in electric propulsion, in his opening remarks. “That should give you a sense of scale of the type of work that will take place here.”
This NASA collaboration on the Research Aircraft for eVTOL Enabling techNologies (RAVEN) will be the hallmark research project of the facility. Tech researchers and engineers will use this space to build an unmanned aircraft that can support a 1,000 lb. payload — somewhere between a high-capacity drone and a small plane. The aircraft will serve as a “flying laboratory” according to NASA.
The research facility will also include a solar-electric aircraft demonstrator and SETTER, a subscale eVTOL testbed focused on developing software for safety-critical applications. These cutting-edge resources will also serve the growing number of AE students at Tech, enabling them to realize some of their most innovative prototypes.
In addition to research projects, vertical flight-focused student organizations also plan to utilize the space to design, build and fly aircrafts. Aidan Bedwell, fifth-year AE, is the president of Drone, Radio Control and Experimental Aircraft Club (DRXC). The organization designs, builds and competitively races a drone each year. He told the Technique that the new research lab, along with other AE makers’ spaces, will enable them to fabricate and test every aspect of their drone.
“We’ve made simple carbon fiber parts before, but this facility lets us produce much more complex and stronger parts. It really enables us to make cutting-edge components. This new facility has a composites clean room and a composites dirty room, which allows us to take raw carbon fiber — whether fabric or prepreg, which is already impregnated with resin — and go through the full process to make high-level, complex parts for components that require high strength and low weight,” Bedwell said.
Isabella Sanz, second-year Ph.D. AE, is the vice president of the Vertical Flight Society’s Georgia Tech chapter. The organization hosts an annual vertical flight-focused design competition and multiple learning and networking events with relevant industry partners.
“Yeah, so a lot of the research we do is abstract — mostly theoretical and computational. But the new space here is going to allow us to sort of take that to a new level and bring things to reality and build a working experiment and test it. We’re excited to expand the scale of some of our projects and get more accurate experimental results from them,” Sanz said.
The opportunities that this facility makes available to students will no doubt enhance their understanding of emerging technologies and prepare them to succeed in industry. Alumni leaders in the aerospace industry were present at the event’s opening and remarked that hands-on experience in a cutting-edge industry like vertical flight or electrical propulsion is unique and valuable for students.
“Could you imagine being a student right now working on the RAVEN program? They’re working directly with NASA. It’s so exciting for a student to graduate with that experience and those contacts. On the corporate side, you can tell the difference between a student who has applied learning experience versus a theoretical background. That applied experience is so valuable,” said Sangita Sharma, AE ‘14 and lab director at Delta Air Lines.
“When we were coming out of Tech, because you didn’t have the hands-on [experience], we didn’t know what we wanted to do. We intellectually thought something was interesting, but we didn’t know what the job entailed, or what actual day-to-day life would be like. Now, students can try things and decide ‘that is or is not me,’” said Lara Hodgson, AE ‘93 and Georgia Tech Foundation Board Trustee.
By enriching the learning experience of AE students and hosting projects that could revolutionize the eVTOL industry, Tech has cemented itself as a global leader in aerospace engineering.
“Georgia Tech, being the No. 1 public university for aerospace engineering, is instrumental to the industry,” said Ember Bentley, Executive Director of the Georgia Aerospace and Defense Alliance. “[It is instrumental] for us to be able to be the No. 1 state in the nation to do business, and for us to remain a center of excellence for defense and national security.”