Mysuru: The students of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering (VVCE), Mysuru, participated in “SAE ISS Aero Design Challenge – 2019” organised by SAEISS (Society of Automotive Engineers India Sothern Section) at SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, last month by designing, testing, fabricating and successfully flying the aircraft.

Remote Controlled (RC) aircraft are basically unmanned aircrafts which are controlled using a Transmitter (Remote) by a pilot who controls the plane from a distance. The application of the RC aeroplane is vast in the near future. SAEISS Aero design features two classes of competition — Regular and Micro. 

Regular class focuses to develop basic understanding of flight (with regular take-off and landing) and main objective is to lift as much of payload as possible. Microclass focuses on carrying small payload while reducing the overall weight of the aircraft (with hand take-off and belly landing). 

Three independent teams of seven students each have developed different unmanned aircraft, namely, Swift 7.1 (Micro), Black Bird7.1 (Micro) and Swift 7 (Regular) led by B.V. Chrandrakanth Sharma, G.V.N. Selvavindhan Vaither and Shashank Munder under the guidance of Prof. Arun C. Dixit and Prof. R. Shivashankar, Assistant Professors in the Department. 

The teams being a part of SAE Aero Club mainly focuses on the idea of innovation and developing from scratch to fully functional RC aircraft. The team won the first prize for “Best Design and Innovation Award” for their aircraft which sported a full aluminium body having a circular tapered cross section.

The teams received appreciation from Dr. Shanmugam, Chairman, Society of Automotive Engineers, Southern Section and Dr. Senthil Kumar, Convenor, Aero Design Challenge-2019 and Jury members for their efforts.

The team has expressed its gratitude to Dr. G.V. Naveen Prakash, Professor and Head, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. B. Sadashive Gowda, Principal and the VVCE for their support and encouragement throughout the journey.