UMD Students Excel at AAIA Region 1 Student Paper Conference

Pictured from left to right: Luke Smith, Mateusz Gabryszuk, Andrew Mills and Gerald Andrews (Not pictured: Joseph Chung)

University of Maryland Aerospace Engineering students exceled at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Region 1 Stu dent Paper Conference held March 27-28 in Blacksburg, Va.

The AIAA Student Paper Conference is a competition in which national AIAA student members at participating colleges and universities present technical papers on aerospace related topics for a chance to win cash prizes. Students have the opportunity to meet and interact with professionals in the aerospace industry as well as faculty and students from their region.

The UMD Undergraduate Technical Paper winners were:

1^st place: Andrew Mills (Faculty mentor: Inderjit Chopra)
Investigation of the Effect of Blade Kinematics and Reynolds Number on the Aerodynamic Performance of a Small-Scale Vertical Axis Wind Turbine with Dynamic Blade Pitching

2^nd place: Luke Smith (Faculty mentor: Anya Jones)
The Effect of Camber on Blunt Trailing Edge Airfoils in Reverse Flow

3^rd place: Mateusz Gabryszuk (Faculty mentor: Anya Jones)
Investigating the Effect of the Wingtip Vortex on the Aerodynamic Performance of a Rotating Wing

The UMD Graduate Technical Paper winners were:

1^st place: Gerald Andrews (Faculty mentor: Inderjit Chopra)
Design and Fabrication of a Meso-Scale Aircraft Using a Cycloidal-Rotor Propulsion System

3^rd place: Joseph Chung (Faculty mentor: Stuart Laurence)
Quasi-One-Dimensional Modeling of an Adiabatic-Compression Preheated Ludwieg Tube

This year's conference included over 120 students and professionals, 65 papers and 15 universities.

Published April 1, 2015