PtU hosting the student competition »Stahl fliegt!«
2018/08/06
Students in 11 teams from five German and one Egyptian universities competed in Darmstadt on the 3 rd and 4 th of July for the longest possible flight and airtime with an aircraft entirely made of steel.
On the day before the competition, all teams presented their planes and design concepts in the Wilhelm-Köhler-hall at the TU Darmstadt. After visiting the test field of the PtU, there was a get together with all teams and the organizers in the evening with a BBQ. As a venue for the flights on the next day, hall 1.2 of the Messe Frankfurt was chosen. The planes were launched from a height of about eleven meters. Besides a maximum weight of 400 grams, they had to fit into a cube with an edge length of one meter. The maximum budget for each team was 300.– €. For evaluation purposes, a minimum flight time and distance were defined, multiplied by a weighting factor and added for the overall ranking.
With a classic glider, the team Kassel 1 could settle clearly against the rest of the field. Steel foil, capillary tubes and spring steel wire yielded an aircraft weighing 102 grams. In the flight competition, the team reached an average of about 10 seconds in flight time and distances of about 40 meters. This was enough for the overall victory this year. Team Kassel 3 finished second. The team from Darmstadt was not able to reach the podium after a difficult start.
The competition is organized by the Institute of Metal Forming (ibf) in Aachen and the participating research institutes and financially supported by the FOSTA (Research Association for Steel Application). We would like to thank the sponsors for this great event and hope to come back in the next year with many students!
