Class Overview

EE656, Aerospace Systems Engineering, is an exciting new class being offered at UAF for the first time during the Fall 2015 semester. Led by Dr. Michael Hatfield, the class is designed to offer students real world experience with the engineering design process by having them work on projects for ACUASI. The initial offering of this course had students starting with two empty airframes, the DJI S900 and the LM Stalker, and designing and building the systems necessary to make them fully operational.

This class is not just about designing and building, however: it is about the entire engineering design process. The key to any successful project is to not only design and build the product, but to be able to pitch your ideas to the customer, acquire funding and resources, and generate the necessary analysis packets and documentation that make a project truly well formed. Students in this class experience the engineering design process by first reviewing statements of work from the customer (ACUASI) and translating it into a list of engineering specifications. The students then discuss revisions with the customer of specifications that may not be feasible. This all culminates in the proposal, where the students tell the customer what they will do and how they will do it, showing proposed designs of the product

Students then learn how to put in purchase orders to acquire the necessary materials to construct their designs. They then build, test, rebuild, and retest, all the while working on the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis Packet, the Engineering Analysis Packet, and the User's Manual. These documents are just as important as the designing and building because without them the finished product would be a fancy device that no one would know how to use or how it worked. Finally, at the end of the semester after all is said and done, the students demonstrate the functionality of their products to the customer.