Technion students present: the first mechanical bird

A fleet of distributed autonomous satellites, an electric passenger plane, a drone and an anti-tank missile - will be presented in the project competition to be held at the annual Israeli conference for aerospace sciences

A unique competition of student projects studying for a bachelor's degree will take place this week within the framework of the annual Israeli conference for aerospace sciences. 16 teams from the Technion, Tel Aviv University, Ben Gurion University and Afka College will participate in the competition. Among the projects that will be presented this Wednesday, a mechanical bird design project, a fifty-passenger airplane design with an electric engine, an anti-tank missile design, Samson - a distributed autonomous satellite project, an experimental investigation of the flight of the hummingbird bird, and a computational and experimental investigation of a mechanical energy harvesting system wind through a vibrating structure.

BIRDINATOR - mechanical bird

The main goal of the "BIRDINATOR" project was to understand the flight of a bird in nature from a mechanical point of view, and to build a model of an artificial bird that would resemble it as much as possible.

"Most of the final projects in the Faculty of Aeronautics and Space Engineering at the Technion are related to the design and development of airplanes or missiles," said Matan Meir, a graduate of the faculty. "We wanted to carry out a different, different project, with 'outside the box' thinking. The project, which is mainly research, was directed by Professor Gil Yosilevsky from the faculty. We wanted to understand how birds manage to fly and how we can reproduce this mechanically. It is important to understand that there was no relevant past experience here, because there are indeed machines that simulate flapping wings, but it is not at all similar to the complex movement of the wings of a bird in flight. The bird's wing moves in a complex motion, which is much more than just rising and falling.

"After many observations of birds in nature and in movies, and delving into articles by biologists on the subject, we were able to develop a mechanical mechanism that simulates the movement of the bird's wing in all its components. After we understood how the bird does it, we were the first to build such a complex mechanism. Using aircraft design tools and mechanical adjustments, we designed such a bird, capable of staying for 10 minutes in flapping flight, a climbing rate of three meters per second, a speed range of 20-10 meters per second in horizontal movement, carrying a load of 20 grams and withstanding gusts of wind. The bird has an engine connected to the wings, and it does most of the maneuvering with the wings. We fly it like a plane.
"In terms of planning, we met the challenge, we created a three-dimensional model and prepared drawings for production. We performed simulations in the MATLAB program, which proves that we were able to simulate the flapping mechanism. We designed a mechanical bird that meets the requirements we set for ourselves."

MAZLATOV - a drone that will represent the Technion in the DBF (Design, Built, Fly) international student competition
A group of ten students from the Technion's Faculty of Aeronautics and Space Engineering participated last April in the DBF (Design, Built, Fly) international student competition, held under the auspices of the American Aeronautics Organization, in Tucson, Arizona.

"We built a drone in the lab at the Technion from scratch, including the design and development, under the guidance of Shlomo Tzach, one of the former senior designers in the aerospace industry," says Chai Kramf, a student at the faculty, who participated in the competition and will present the project at the conference. "In the competition, we were required to build an aircraft with an extremely short take-off capability (30 feet), internal and external armament carrying capacity, with the total weight of the aircraft having to be as low as possible. In the competition, you receive a score for meeting the requirements and success in the tasks, and a penalty in points for deviations in the size and weight of the aircraft.
"We worked on the project for almost a year. After hard work, dozens of drawings and several crashes, we managed to build a drone, its wingspan is two meters and its length is 1.36 m, capable of carrying rockets of size 40-30 cm.

"The competition, which takes place over three days, was attended by hundreds of students from leading universities from all over the world. Three tasks must be performed and each group has four attempts. We succeeded in the first attempt, and in two days we finished all the tasks. We were ranked 12th out of 82 teams. It's an enriching experience and it's the most important thing I did during my studies at the Technion. The normal studies are 'on dry land', but here I was required to have important practical experience."
Design of an electric passenger plane
Another group of students from the Technion will present a groundbreaking project at the conference, led by Shlomo Tzach, one of the former senior planners at the Aerospace Industry: designing a 50-passenger plane with an electric engine.
"Designing an electric passenger plane is a fundamental challenge related to energy," said group leader Oz Sa'ar, who graduated from the Faculty of Aeronautics and Space Engineering last year. "The challenge in designing such an aircraft is in the production of batteries that will reach a level of density similar to that of jet fuel. This is a technology that is under development, and it is clear that they will succeed in producing such batteries by 2020. The challenge in development is that batteries must be produced that will last as long as possible in flight time, on the one hand, and that will be light and will not burden the weight of the plane, on the other hand. The world is going in this direction, and electric motors already exist.

"Our project included designing and producing a XNUMXD model of such an aircraft. We may be ahead of our time, but in the future they will produce electric planes that will be better for the environment. I currently work as an engineer in a company that works on such development."

The annual Israeli conference for aerospace sciences, which will be held on Wednesday-Thursday, February 20-19, is taking place for the 54th year and is attended by about five hundred engineers, scientists and experts in the fields of aeronautics and space from Israel and the world. During the days of the conference, new research results will be revealed and technological achievements and future developments will be presented. The conference was organized by the Technion, Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University, the Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael, the Israel Military Industry, Elbit, the Israel Aerospace Sciences Association, and the Ministry of Defense.