AE 100 segways first-year students into aerospace

Brian Woodard has taught AE 100 almost every year since 2014. Although he now serves as the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs in The Grainger College of Engineering, he decided to teach AE 100 again this fall because of the students. The one-semester course is required for all first-year AE students.

“First-year students are so enthusiastic about their major and learning about the possible careers paths available to them,” Woodard said. “They bring so much energy and excitement to each class that I look forward to getting to the lab to build rockets and gliders with them just as much as I hope the students look forward to the sessions.”

Woodard said the purpose of the course is to provide a project-based introduction to the discipline of aerospace engineering and get them started building vehicles within the first few weeks of their aerospace journey at Illinois.

“Students are busy during those first semesters with calculus, physics, and chemistry, which are, of course, crucial foundational courses. We want them to see how principles are applied to the rockets and gliders that we build in the class.  Each section of the class is relatively small, and the students work in small teams on the projects, so I hope we are also building a community of aerospace engineers starting from the first semester.”

Woodard said the course introduces students to the importance of communication and teamwork as essential to their success as engineers. They submit several writing assignments, peer review those assignments, and resubmit improved versions.

“We discuss effective teamwork, and we spend a few sessions getting the students to think about their ethical obligations as professional engineers.”

First, the students learn how to design, build, and launch model rockets that reach a target altitude while keeping the payload safe. Then they design and build gliders while learning about aerodynamics.

Aidan Piper from Fairview Heights near St. Louis said he had some extremely limited experience with model rockets but no experience with gliders.

“When we launched our final design, the center of mass turned out to be too far behind the center of lift, resulting in the glider aggressively pitching upwards, so we had to add some washers to the front of the glider,” Piper said. “It also veered to the left due to too much epoxy used when we attached the winglets. We managed to mitigate it but not completely negate it by counterbalancing it with some electrical tape.”

One of Piper’s teammates, first-year AE student Isaiah Bostwick from Carol Stream, was pleased when his team was able to make adjustments to their glider, moving the center of mass toward the end and resulting in a better flight.

“I've made my occasional paper airplane or two, but I've never made something like this before,” Bostwick said. “I had a lot of fun experimenting on designs and then making an official prototype. It really helped me to get an understanding of aerodynamics.”

Additional team members were Alex Wilson and Carlo Alvarez.

Ethan Hendrickson, first-year AE student from O'Fallon, said everyone on his team had flown paper airplanes, but no one had prior experience with gliders. In all of their trial flights, the glider was back heavy, causing the nose to pitch up, resulting in a quick descent.

“To adjust for this, we added weight in the front to displace the center of gravity relative to the center of lift,” Hendrickson said. “We also noticed our glider off the launch did not get sufficient altitude, so we adjusted our elevators and increased the tension of launcher to induce more lift. These two changes to the glider greatly increased our outcome.”

Hendrickson said he and his teammates—Ryan Hingle, Emily Grzyb, and Zana Serbest— learned a lot from the course.  

“On the technical side, we learned about what it means to be an engineer and the ethics associated with the job title. We were informed on job opportunities and the subdisciplines in aerospace from a guest speaker. On the technical side, we learned how to use Python to plot data and run computations. We were lectured on fluids, aerodynamics, airfoils, and plane components during the glider project. In the model rocket project, we were introduced to orbital mechanics, propulsion, rocket components, NX CAD, and Open Rocket, a simulation program. This class was a great segway into the aerospace field.”