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The following article is a description of the process by which I made a new cowling for my Formula One racer Wasabi in 2009. I race my airplane at the Reno Championship Air Races in Reno Nevada. These are pylon races which are races which involve 8 airplanes racing around telephone poles in the desert at altitudes as low as 30 feet. The formula class is a very affordable class for people interested in racing airplanes and it is also very restrictive (which helps to keep the cost down). As a result very little can be done to the engine in particular to increase the speeds on the course. This project took approximately three months to complete with two people working on it nights and weekends. The cost is less than 10 thousand dollars.
The cowling of an experimental aircraft has two primary jobs. Fair the engine into the fuselage and provide a cooling opening that cools the engine. In the case of the carbon fiber cowling I built for my formula racer Wasabi for the 2009 air races I hoped to make the cowling better at both of these jobs.
Fair the engine into the fuselage. fundamentally the cowling takes the conical shape of the spinner and continues it around the engine and back to the shape of the fuselage at the firewall. The cowling that I had run in 2008 was all aluminum and was therefore pretty boxy. By using composites I planned to be able to incorporate more curvy shapes that would result in less drag.
Provide cooling air to the engine. The aluminum cowling that I ran in 2008 provided too much cooling air, over cooling my cylinders to the low 200sF. By closing the inlets on this new cowling I hoped to limit the cooling air and by doing so reduce the overall drag of the installation.
I am going to mostly focus on the handforming of shapes for making composite parts rather than the technical aspects of particular design choices (it is for racing afterall). The act of handforming composite plugs is quickly becoming old world as a sanding block is replaced with a CNC mill. In the case of this particular project in order to CAD model the cowl I would have neeed a model of the engine which I don't have. So I took advantage of the opportunity as a chance to learn a bit more of the art of hand forming.
Attached below is an air to air picture of the original cowling that we were hoping to improve upon.
The cowling of an experimental aircraft has two primary jobs. Fair the engine into the fuselage and provide a cooling opening that cools the engine. In the case of the carbon fiber cowling I built for my formula racer Wasabi for the 2009 air races I hoped to make the cowling better at both of these jobs.
Fair the engine into the fuselage. fundamentally the cowling takes the conical shape of the spinner and continues it around the engine and back to the shape of the fuselage at the firewall. The cowling that I had run in 2008 was all aluminum and was therefore pretty boxy. By using composites I planned to be able to incorporate more curvy shapes that would result in less drag.
Provide cooling air to the engine. The aluminum cowling that I ran in 2008 provided too much cooling air, over cooling my cylinders to the low 200sF. By closing the inlets on this new cowling I hoped to limit the cooling air and by doing so reduce the overall drag of the installation.
I am going to mostly focus on the handforming of shapes for making composite parts rather than the technical aspects of particular design choices (it is for racing afterall). The act of handforming composite plugs is quickly becoming old world as a sanding block is replaced with a CNC mill. In the case of this particular project in order to CAD model the cowl I would have neeed a model of the engine which I don't have. So I took advantage of the opportunity as a chance to learn a bit more of the art of hand forming.
Attached below is an air to air picture of the original cowling that we were hoping to improve upon.
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Signing UpStep 1Protect the engine
As with any motorsport the engine of your formula is valuable and safety critical. Because of all the grinding and pourfoaming that was to follow in the later steps the first thing I did was cover the engine. I used saran wrap from the grocery store. Before wrapping the engine I disconnected everything that went between the engine and the firewall so that I could wrap the back of the engine as well.
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I'm such a neat-freak..
Is the shop ever clean again after something like this?
Composites are sort of inherently messy. If you aren't carving and sanding then you are slopping pucky all over everything. The guys who are really good, guys like Jon and Trish Sharp, Cory Bird, and Andy Chiavetta, they don't make near the mess but there is always a mess.
I would invest in a good shop vac or two, plenty of filters. Masking tape, poly sheet and that brown painter's paper. All this makes for a lot of trash, I fill two to three garage bags a week. I keep two sets of clothes, those that go to the hangar and those that don't (carbon itch is a bear). And I end up showering twice a day so it doesn't get in my bed sheets. Sounds like a pain but there is no other way to get an airplane that looks as good or goes as fast.
You've got to try it.
Elliot
I think I'm going to give this method a try when I build a fiberglass fairing for my motorcycle. Heck, maybe I'll even try it with an actual airplane some day as I'm going to school for aeronautical engineering.
I was going to ask how the resin holds up to the heat but I see you already addressed that below.
Anyway, thanks for the awesome instructable and the inspiration that goes with it!
Great profile picture!
Elliot
Scaled Composites looks like a pretty picky sort of employer with the caliber of aircraft that they design.
Thank you for your interest. I have a BS in Mechanical engineering from Union College in Schenectady NY.
Scaled is known to be a challenging place to get a job, but typically there isn't a single specific qualification that will get you noticed by our hiring department. On the job an engineer at Scaled is expected to be able to handle alot of responsibility both vertically and laterally (from intial design through manufacture and test with a reasonable amount of depth at each level). As a result the best way to qualify yourself to become an engineer at Scaled is to be doing those things before you get here.
The best example is to be designing, building, and flight testing aircraft of your own before you get here (like this tutorial). But it doesn't have to be airplanes we have car guys and motorcycle guys and even land speed record guys. Burt (our founder) always said that you shouldn't be designing it unless you could build it yourself.
All that being said many of our engineers spent several years trying to get the attention of the company before they did.
At the end of the day we are looking for engineers with strong fundamentals and the hands on skills it takes to make theory into hardware, because hardware is what our customers pay for. It also doesn't hurt if you are a pilot or if you think airplanes are the coolest. If you know someone who fits this bill they should check out the careers section of the Scaled website, as we are currently hiring.
Thanks,
Elliot
Elliot
I want to be a pilot when I'm older, but I still can't believe that some people trust their lives in some of these. I guess you're an aerospace engineer, but still...
Anyways, just as a general aviation question, are there any regulations that need to be met for experimental aircraft to be completely "legal"?
As far as the completely legal question I am not sure what you mean. Everything I have shown in this tutorial is completely legal. In the US an experimental aircraft can legally do just about anything a certified aircraft can do except carry paying passengers. In order to fly your homebuilt experimental aircraft it needs to be inspected by the FAA or equivalent in order to be legal. This representative will look over your work and your engineering before signing you off to fly. After that you need to do phase one flight test which includes demonstrating the envelope of the airplane, this flight test typically needs to be done near your home airport. After that as the designer and builder you are responsible for keeping the airplane airworthy and therefore safe.
At the end of the day I can take off here in mojave and land in san diego in one hour. That same trip would take 3.5 hours by car. If that doesn't get you excited about airplanes, I don't know what will.
Thanks,
Elliot
Thank you.
I split the cowl horzontally because it works best. I have worked on airplanes that are split alot of different ways and the horizontal split just works better. You can take off the top to get access to your cooling plenum and your plugs and get limited inspection access, and when things get serious you drop the lower.
The reason we split the tools vertically is proprietary.
thanks again,
Elliot
Nice instructable, thanks for posting
For Vbg I use 100 mph when racing because I use it for my base to final turn, but in actuality Vbg is much slower than that. In general the airplane's stability both directionally and longitudinally is marginal (its a racer) and as a result it will snap pretty easily in an uncoordinated stall so I keep my speeds up throughout the envelope at the cost of glide performance. Vs is 58 mph (at race weight) with no flaps or gear levers to play with Vso and Vs1 are the same. The only thing that changes is the pilot's anxiety level which coresponds directly to whether or not he has a healthy engine and how big the crowd is that's watching.
This is an uncoordinated stall we shot a few years ago, notice how quick its on its back. Typically its a quick buffet in the elevator (you can see the pitch bobble) and then it snaps. Obviously I am aggrivating it in the video but I think it explains my nervousness about getting slow near the ground.
Thanks again,
Elliot
Check out the Wasabi website for Wasabi gear, and if you can make it come out to Reno for the races in a couple weeks.
Elliot
Have fun,
Elliot
I personally find it takes about 0.030" of thickness to get the flatter shapes stable. Obviously more curvature means it takes less material. At the end of the day on something like this you will end up picking your thickness based on the countersinks that hold the thing together.
Thanks,
Elliot
Thanks,
Elliot
Elliot
Elliot
Is a Cassutt (or however it's spelled) all aluminum?
The Cassutt (after the designer Tom Cassutt) is steel wood and fabric. The fuselage is a welded steel tube truss with wood stringers covered with fabric (like a piper cub) and the wing is wood structure (spars and ribs) sheeted with plywood then covered with fabric.
Thanks again,
Elliot
Cowl flaps are way cool!
Elliot
Thanks for the interest! I didn't cover how I did the exhaust openings in the interest of simplicity.
I attached some exhaust detail pictures. They are steel weldments that include turning vanes to get the exhaust to lay down on the side of the fuselage. They were fabricated with the help of master aircraft builder Ralph Wise.
Elliot
This is a common thing in air racing (see Darryl Greenamyer's Man for the record). After the same goal, to suck the exhaust down as close to the fuselage as possible Darryl got the cockpit close to 200 degrees on his record setting runs at Edwards. In his case the exhaust surface the exhaust was laying on was the fuselage wall right by the cockpit which made for a warm pilot. The attached pictures are of that airplane which is now in the smithsonian accross from Jon Sharps Nemesis Formula One.
To directly address the picture and the question. What you are seeing is the bondo and paint that can't handle the temps at race power. Typically the next thing to go is the resin and last is the carbon fiber itself. I have gotten carbon well over 400 F without destroying the fibers but most resins wont be any good much over 300F. The nice thing about racing is it's all over pretty fast.
Thanks,
Elliot