UM Todayaerospace – UM Today

UMSAE Aero exhibition opening at Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada

Chris Reid — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 18:05:22 +0000

UMSAE Aero is thrilled to announce the upcoming opening of a temporary exhibit at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada! The exhibit will be open until June 2023 and showcases past and present aircrafts designed and built by the UM’s Aero team. The team has placed on the podium of the international SAE Aero Design competition for the last five seasons that they’ve taken part in, including winning first overall in both 2018 and 2019.

The team is very excited for this opportunity to inspire high-school and university students to get involved with STEM and aerospace by showcasing some of the incredible opportunities that students can be part of by joining engineering student organizations. Students who have been on UMSAE have learned some incredible skills and have gained hands-on experience with designing aircraft, off-road buggies and race cars.

The team’s project manager, Lucas Audette would like to give “A huge thank you to Malcolm Symonds, the former UMSAE faculty advisor who got this collaboration off the ground for us to display our designs in a beautiful venue, surrounded by a collection of gorgeous antique aircraft”.

A grand opening event is happening on Saturday, February 4th from 1-3 pm. The event will include guest speakers and a Q & A with the SAE Aero team. We hope to see you there!

Electric airship plan makes it to final round of national competition

Chris Rutkowski — Wed, 16 May 2018 14:35:12 +0000

A proposal for an electric cargo airship has made it to the final round of a national contest to come up with “the next big thing” that will transform Canada. The brainchild of Dr. Barry Prentice, the proposal pitches the development of a cargo airship transport network that would do for the Canadian North what the railway did for Western Canada 140 years ago.

“It’s an idea whose time has come,” says Prentice. “Some remote communities have deplorable living conditions, Canadian sovereignty is threatened by warming Arctic Seas, and ice roads are becoming unreliable because of climate change. A lower cost, year-round mode of transportation is needed.”

The Caninfra challenge ideas contest aims to surface transformational infrastructure ideas from all across Canada. Voting for the People’s Choice Winner will be open from May 14 to May 23, 2018, and you can vote once per day.

The Short-List of Finalists is posted on the CanInfra website: https://www.caninfra.ca/vote

Learning to Fly

Brandy OReilly — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 20:20:46 +0000

The University of Manitoba’s Aero Design team is one of four design teams that create The University of Manitoba Student Chapter of SAE International (UMSAE). This team of engineering students work together to design and build an aircraft to compete in the SAE Aero Design competitions. This year the SAE competition was held March 10 – 12^th, 2017 in Fort Worth, Texas.

UMSAE Students with their prototype aircraft and tennis ball passengers.

At the end of January, the team submitted their design report, and in consultation with alumni, faculty and industry engineers, the team developed their full-scale prototype of the aircraft. This prototype helped identify flaws in the design and provided the team with a direction for building the final product. As the competition date neared, two aircrafts were constructed to ensure the team was covered if a catastrophic failure occur with one of the models.

The first day at the competition consisted of technical and design presentations. Team Lead, Joyce Valencerina says “these are the most nerve-racking events because the presentation counts for a significant part of your overall score. We were happy, the presentation team did well, and both planes passed technical inspection!”

The team’s pilot, Don Hatch, who has been flying with the team for 25 years, aided the team in placing 3^rd overall. In addition, the team placed 3^rd in the highest payload category and 4^th in the presentation portion of the competition.

A second team, called UMSAE Micro Aero also competed in Texas. The Micro class of the competition aims for the creation of a compact, hand launched aircraft that can be easily assembled and disassembled to fit all parts in a tube. The models are scored by payload fraction (payload weight over total weight of the aircraft). The UMSAE Micro Aero team finished 10th overall.=

The UMSAE Aero teams were very pleased with the results and they hope to continue their success at future competitions.