Weekly Update: Week 1

During week one groups were formed. As a group we chose to design and build a kite. After making this decision we had to discuss how to approach the project. We decided to model the kite after a flying bird. The overall shape will have a long center support and sides resembling open wings. This structure should provided stability due to its symmetric shape. The picture below is a sketch of our proposed kite structure.

Figure 1: Sketch of proposed kite structure

Sticking with the theme of nature, it is our goal to use natural and our recycled materials for the kite. The frame will be made of some kind of recycled wood and the sails will be made of recycled plastic bags.

Challenges we faced this week included forming a group and learning to communicate with group members. At the start of the meeting, everyone had a different idea. We had to compromise and come up with an idea that pleased everyone. Eventually we decided on the bird theme.

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Weekly Update: Week 6

This week was focused on further improving our prototype. We kept the same shape of the frame, however we spilt the skewers in half vertically, to make the kite lighter. This allowed the kite to glide further. Figure one shows the current prototype Figure 1: split skewer dihedral frame Another thing we did this week was try different plastics for the sail. We thought if we tried a stronger plastic, the kite would be stronger and more resistant to damage. The plastic we tried was thicker and stiffer than the plastic we had been using to test our prototypes. Figure two shows a comparison of the two plastics. The thinner plastic (brown) is shown on the left and the thicker plastic (white) is shown on the right. This added unnecessary weight and caused the kite to not glide as far. As a team we decided that good flight was better than strength, in this case. We took the thicker plastic off and went pack to the original thinner plastic. This is ...

Weekly Update: Week 2

This week's lab session was dedicated to research. We did not have our materials, thus we could not start building prototypes just yet. Instead we looked into background information. We found many sites that gave us key information on how and why a kite flies. We also looked into technical kite terminology. This information helped us to understand why certain kite shapes acts the way they do. Through research, we found that the most successful indoor kites are based off of the Delta wing shape. This style of kite features a triangular shape. This shape allows the kite adjust to changes in wind. Figure 1 shows a an example of a Delta Kite. Figure 1: Example of Delta kite http://intothewind.com/delta-kites This shape maybe useful in our kite design. Our design is inspired by a flying bird. The Delta shape resembles a bird in some ways. A few modifications may be needed, but using this shape is definitely something to think about. ...

Weekly Update: Week 8

This week we focused on getting quantitative data. Over the term we have evolved our prototype. This resulted in having four versions. We wanted to test each one to see if our final design is really the best. To start we collected glide ratios for each prototype. We were surprised to see that one of our early prototypes glided better and further than our current prototype. The early prototype glided 15 feet while the current prototype glided only 9 feet. Because of this finding we decided we wanted to test each with a line attached. Just because a kite glides well does not mean it has good control in the air. through this test we found that our current prototype offers more control in the air. We believe this is due to its dihedral shape. The other prototype is flat and had no way of correcting itself when it got off balance. The dihedral shape offered more lateral stability. Taking both tests into account we decided that the current prototype is in fact the better of the two proto...

grp070-11:Indoor Kite

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