19th Annual Design, Build, Fly Contest Attracts Talented Engineering Students from All Over the World Written 16 April 2015
by Hannah Godofsky, AIAA Communications
The 19th annual Design, Build, Fly competition was held 10-12 April 2015 at TIMPA Airfield near Tucson, Arizona. Sponsored in conjunction with Raytheon Missile Systems and Cessna Aircraft, the annual contest is held by AIAA in either Tucson or Wichita during alternating years. This year’s contest welcomed over 650 students from 25 U.S. states, as well as from 15 other countries. The truly global nature of the competition really shined during the days out on the airfield as students from all over the world cooperated, learned, and competed in a grueling engineering contest.
The students arrived at the competition with their aircraft in pieces and had to assemble their projects onsite. Next, the teams competed in four separate missions; three in the air and one on the ground. This competition was the culmination of months of dedicated work to design a plane that could meet this year’s challenges and prepare a technical report outlining their design and testing processes.
The American teams brought a large amount of school-spirit gear with them. A diverse set of students from all around the nation, including from California, Ohio, and Texas, had flags, t-shirts, tents, and banners representing their teams. It was an impressive display of espirit d’corps.
In the end, the day truly belonged to the international students, as many of them ranked very highly in the competition. The University of Ljubljana from Slovenia had a large presence on the airfield with 21 students in attendance. They also led all teams in overall score. Tel Aviv University and Beihang University also placed very highly. There was even one student who made the long voyage from Cairo to represent an entire team which had been unable to secure visas. She was able to successfully pass the technical inspection and complete the ground mission.
All in all it was a successful event, and AIAA thanks all of the students and volunteers who contributed to making Design, Build, Fly one of this year’s most successful programs, and we also thank the students and volunteers who help make Design, Build, Fly one of the Institute’s most rewarding annual programs. The efforts of everyone who participated did not go unnoticed – KVOA News in Tucson covered the event, and our social media channels were extremely active during #AIAADBF. Joanneum Astronautics from Austria produced several YouTube videos about their travels and competition efforts, and several other teams were also posting on Twitter during the contest. We look forward to the 2016 event in Wichita.
2015 DBF Scorecard
First Place went to the University of Ljubljana, the first time an international team has won DBF, Second Place went to University of California Irvine and Third Place went to Georgia Institute of Technology. The Best Paper Award, sponsored by the Design Engineering TC for the highest report score, went to Georgia Institute of Technology with a score of 98.50.