The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics sponsored Herff students at the 2026 Senior Design Expo

The Herff College of Engineering is extremely grateful to all of the industry partners who sponsored students' 2026 Senior Design projects. The nine-month assignments serve as the capstone projects for Herff's engineering students and allow students to work hand-in-hand with industries. 

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) sponsored Team Flaps and Furious. Team Flaps and Furious designed a blueprint for an electric-powered, remote-controlled bush plane capable of performing charter missions and towing a deployable banner for the 2025-2026 Design, Build, Fly competition. The competition's objective is to design, build, and test an electric-powered, remote-controlled bush plane capable of performing charter missions and towing a deployable banner. The aircraft must complete three missions, each mission requiring the plane to fly three laps within five minutes: Mission I without payload, Mission II transporting at least three passengers and one cargo, and Mission III remotely deploying a banner. The passengers are standard size 2.3-inch rubber ducks, and each piece of cargo is a standard hockey puck. The constraints for the aircraft consist of a maximum wingspan of five feet and a fuselage containing at least one passenger compartment and one cargo compartment.

The final design selected optimizes mission performance and features a high wing, single tractor propulsion system, conventional tail, and taildragger landing gear. These choices were driven by the objectives of the DBF missions as well as practical considerations, including cost, availability of components, efficiency, stability, and manufacturability. This design configuration formed a baseline for the team’s aircraft design for further iterations.

"Who said senior design projects are all work and no play?" said Dr. Jeffrey Marchetta, who served as a faculty advisor for Team Flaps and Furious. "These students had a lot of fun designing this project. And while it provided hands-on experience during the building process, the cost varitable also forced the students to develop a practical mindset which will benefit both them and the companies they work for in the future." 

Thank you, AIAA, for supporting Herff students!