AE's "Maximum Capacitance" team took first place and a monetary award in the Capstone Design Expo Aerospace category. Team members are: Addison Hern, Michael Hodgson, Michael Steinfeld, Bobby Barrett, Parker Vascik, Ben Bitoun, Stephen Fialko, Jeff Brenna and David Diaz.  Faculty mentors are Neil Weston and Carl Johnson.

The Capstone Design Expo was held at the McCamish Pavilion on the Georgia Tech campus on April 25, 2013 and was a great success. Attended by over 2000 interested persons, the Expo was host to more than 130 student teams from the Georgia Tech College of Engineering AE, ME, ECE & BioMed Schools along with teams from the GT College of Architecture.

There were many senior design teams representing AE with helicopter, aircraft and spacecraft projects on display. Awards were given in multiple categories.

AE's winning team "Maximum Capacitance", designed and developed a 2030-era hybrid-electric aircraft called the Clean Air Rapid Regional Link (CARRL). The aircraft is designed to provide the lowest cost per available seat-mile while using a novel aircraft design. The design process begins with a conventional figure of merit analysis followed by consideration of eight different hybrid-electric engine architectures. Further analyses consider the gamut of available technological advances before determining several optimized, compatible, technology packages.

A complete stakeholder analysis is conducted to enhance the quality and marketability of the proposed aircraft. An aerodynamic analysis is then used to develop the structural parameters of both the wings and the control surfaces. This analysis is taken a further step with the generation of dynamic and static stability controls. The proposed aircraft meets all Level 1 handling requirements given the addition of a full-state feedback controller. A design of experiments, finite element Pareto frontier analysis tool is developed by the team to comprehensively select the optimal design solution. The optimal solution is then analyzed for weight and balance, emissions, and structural soundness.

Final design of the aircraft is finally analyzed for cost and marketability. A complete structural arrangement of the interior and exterior components of the aircraft is provided to validate the design. The resulting aircraft meets all requirements given in the RFP and qualitatively evaluates each of the primary assumptions for validity and optimization. The selected aircraft uses a box wing with two electric turboprop engines and a third, fuel-burning engine connected to a generator, it has a minimum cost per seat-mile of $0.046 (2013 $).

Our thanks to Mike Miller and the School of AE Student Advisory Council (SAESAC) for all the hard work and planning that went into the AE School's participation in the Capstone Design Expo.  Boeing representatives who were present said they would work with the AE School to make the event an even bigger success next year.