FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 16, 2023 – Reston, Va. – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) today announced the winners of the 27th Annual AIAA Design/Build/Fly (DBF) Competition:
- First Place ($3,000): RWTH Aachen University, Germany
- Second Place ($2,000): University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
- Third Place ($1,500): Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida
- Best Report Score ($100): University of Washington, Seattle
The complete 2023 DBF Competition results are posted online.
This year marks the largest ever DBF Competition flyoff participation, with 868 university students on 81 teams attending onsite. The flyoff event was hosted by AIAA Corporate Member Raytheon in Tucson, Ariz. Teams from 14 countries, including 27 US states and the District of Columbia participated in the full DBF Competition, including submitting design reports and attending the flyoff.
This year’s flight objective was to design, build, and test an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to conduct surveillance and jamming missions for electronic warfare. More details about the mission requirements are available on the DBF website: aiaa.org/dbf.
“Design/Build/Fly is a highlight of the year,” said Dan Dumbacher, AIAA executive director. “Aerospace trains us to adapt to the unexpected. It’s a great lesson for students as they prepare to enter this vibrant and meaningful field. Congratulations to the winning teams and all the teams that made it here to the DBF flyoff! The lessons learned and connections made here will be the basis for their future careers.”
Russ Althof, director of the DBF Organizing Committee, said, “We owe our thanks for the success of the DBF competition to the efforts of many volunteers from Raytheon Technologies, Textron Aviation, and the AIAA sponsoring technical committees: Applied Aerodynamics, Aircraft Design, Flight Test, and Design Engineering. These volunteers collectively set the rules for the contest, publicize the event, gather entries, judge the written reports, and judge the flyoff in Tucson.”
The 2024 AIAA DBF Competition will be held in April 2024 and hosted in Wichita, Kan., by Textron.
Media Contact: Rebecca B. Gray, [email protected], 804-397-5270 cell
About AIAA
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world’s largest aerospace technical society. With nearly 30,000 individual members from 91 countries, and 100 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, visit aiaa.org, or follow AIAA on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Stephen Monroe just completed his first year as an M.S. student in Mechanical Engineering at Clarkson University. He received his B.S. from Clarkson University in 2022. In his senior year, Monroe began learning CFD algorithms and HPC in the research group of Professor Chunlei Liang. During the first year of graduate study, Monroe conducted URANS studies of an ONR waterjet propulsion unit on parallel computers. He also is performing large eddy simulations of the same propulsion system to examine finer flow structures. Monroe is determined to become a skillful computational fluid dynamicist in large eddy simulations using an open-source code before completing his M.S. program. While uncertain about his future in academia, Monroe intends on using the skills he has developed to become a proficient propulsion system designer.“Coming into the Graduate School, I only intended on achieving an M.S. degree. Having been recognized for my hard work by the Abe Zarem award, not only has my passion for research been rejuvenated, but my consideration of furthering my education has as well,” said Monroe.
Monroe’s faculty advisor, Chunlei Liang, is Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Clarkson University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of London in 2005. Liang is an ASME Fellow and an AIAA Associate Fellow.
Quentin Roberts is an M.S. student at the University of Washington studying aeronautics and astronautics with a concentration in fluids. His research is on injector mixing in rotating detonation rocket engines (RDREs). Roberts will start work in fall 2023 as a propulsion analyst at Blue Origin. “Receiving this award will allow me to greatly expand my horizons in the world of astronautics by not only providing an opportunity to learn about what research the international community is working on, but also an opportunity to present my own research to an international audience,” said Roberts.
Roberts’ faculty advisor, Carl Knowlen, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Washington in 1983 and 1985, respectively. He continued with his graduate research on ram accelerators at the UW and completed his Ph.D. program in 1991. Dr. Knowlen then accepted a Postdoctoral Research Associate position with the UW Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and has been teaching AA Department courses on a regular basis since 2002.