Scaled Flight Testing Lab

Designing, manufacturing and testing innovative sustainable aircraft designs at sub-scale in flight

The Scaled Flight Testing Laboratory (SFTL) is a lab dedicated to enabling research on innovative unconventional aircraft designs at sub-scale. Research is focused on dynamic testing of these new aircraft designs in flight, allowing the comparison to theoretical and analytical results. Actual free flight gives advantages over wind tunnel testing in that test articles are free to move with their own eigen motions, allowing stability and controllability coefficients to be determined which are not possible on a fixed or semi-dynamic wind tunnel models. Furthermore, the process of designing and building a flying model lends itself to identifying and solving potential challenges with a new design.

The SFTL is equipped with all the necessary tooling to produce accurate yet complex aircraft, mostly of composite materials. Accuracy is quantified using a Faro Quantum coordinate measuring arm which allows for reduced uncertainty in research results. The lab is almost self-sufficient, with areas for mechanical work such as cut-sand-drill, electronics assembly and testing, prototype PCB manufacturing, small CNC machining, vacuum infusion composite production and desk space for design work such as CAD and analysis tasks. With a usable floor area of 75 m2, aircraft with maximum wingspan of approximately 10 meters can be manufactured.