Kindly give an introduction about yourself
Matthew Davies (MD): I'm Matthew Davies, 37 from Wrexham, North Wales. I graduated from Wrexham University (formerly Glyndwr University) in 2022 with a Bachelor of Engineering in Aeronautical and Mechanical engineering, followed by a Masters of Science in unmanned aircraft systems august 2023.
In May 2023 I started working at Sierra Nevada Corporation - Mission systems UK as a UAS Systems integration engineer. This covers UAS design, ranging from CAD & CAE design, simulation, manufacture and test flying.
How were you involved with the UAS Challenge while at University?
MD: In October 2021, the university offered the chance for final year undergraduate students to take part in the UAS Challenge as a team and as a keen model aviator I went to the meetings, signed up and got involved. We formed a team of 10 students. A few meetings later, each member of the team was tasked with designing a rough concept for submission in the next team meeting where each concept was voted on.
Much to my surprise my design won the vote, which initially put me straight into a design lead role. In further meetings each team member either selected a role they wanted to do or was tasked with leftover roles. By choice my initial task for the team was to design the concept's three-piece high-lift main wing and I used this for my undergraduate thesis, as I figured that it would be a value skillset that I could hopefully take forward into a career. Once completed, I helped and assisted other team members, particularly those struggling or stuck; afterall, a problem shared is a problem halved.
What were the notable challenges with your build and how did you overcome them?
MD: In the design stages, I had to quickly get to grips with the Solidworks CAD package. At the time as a final year engineer student and a 3D printer enthusiast, I had a decent set of skills within Inventor/Fusion 360 by Autodesk, so after designing a mathematical model of the wing I set off and created all the individual parts; ribs, spars, control surfaces, trailing edges and skins.
We then purchased the Solidworks CAD package for the assembly, and by then we had access to Ansys R2021 via Wrexham University, so the CFD simulation was done on Ansys Fluent. These Fluid Structure Interaction / FSI results were imported into Ansys Static Structural to stress test the wing, skin and check that the lift and drag force results from the mathematical model were somewhere near the experimental data for the wing size and airfoil selected.
Although CFD worked fine from the skin model, due to the use of different software packages being used we experienced the static structural simulations were constant and frustratingly returning many meshing errors. To overcome this I spent many hours with Wrexham University’s Engineering lead Dr Shafiul Monur and Technician Paulo Roque correcting my meshing on Ansys and it was discovered that using one CAD package would be beneficial in the future.
After design and engineering simulations returned acceptable results, manufacture commenced and in one afternoon all the ribs were cut at Wrexham university. I spent the next 3 weeks in the lab at uni assembling the wing. Once skinned and covered, the control surfaces were cut from hot foam by hand and fitted. This involved dragging hot wire over two-part ribs mounted symmetrically each end of a block of foam cut to each surface design length. All this was a steep learning curve but very enjoyable.
While behind schedule on the construction of the fuselage the tube in the university's laser started to perform poorly. This led to me cutting the fuselage former parts on a k40 laser I had at home but with such demand it struggled, also too small a bed working area for the fuselage sides, so the team each had to spend money of their own travelling to DoEs Makerspace in Liverpool to get the sides laser cut.
DoEs were very helpful and offered the service free on a Thursday night – (I still owe them promised carrot cake and need to keep that promise). The odds were stacked high at this point as the UAS team had shrunk to 6 members.
The week of the competition our Autonomy tasked team member dropped out of the event due to work commitments which sadly left us entering manually – turned out to be only 3 teams flying autonomously which on discovering this lead me into enrolling for a masters in UAS systems for 2023’s competition, with a thesis on full autonomous UAS flight and while sadly the university didn’t enter 2023, my thesis still went ahead.
What skills and experiences did you gain from taking part?
MD: Alongside the lectured engineering lectures it became apparent that sometimes how processes are supposed to pan out doesn’t normally happen. A valuable aspect I have taken is to expect the unexpected, allow 1.5 to 2 times the expected time to get tasking done. I learnt that in aeronautical engineering innovation is almost inevitable. If something can go wrong, factor that it will go wrong. Nothing makes an engineer more productive than the last 10 minutes!
Teamwork and reliability of team members must be stressed from the beginning, or a team of 10 suddenly ends up as a team of 5, 5 weeks to go and everybody then has twice as much work and half as much time.
How did participating help your engineering career?
MD: Joining the 2022 UAS Challenge allowed me to develop the following skill sets: UAS Design, UAS CFD Simulation with Ansys, Additive manufacture and CNC laser cutting. Adding these experiences to my 20 years of RC model flying on my CV led me to receiving 2 job offers across UAS design and systems engineering from both Callen Lenz and SNC MS-Uk, together with an interview offer with Tekever.
What have been your best moments of the competition?
MD: Flying our UAS for the first time was quite magical but not as magical as my team mates' reactions when we got closer to the challenge. After the long days and ever increasing workload it all became worth it from the roar and cheer as it flew at its first flight at the challenge.
That moment made all the effort and long days so very worth it and I enjoyed it that much I returned 2023 to volunteer. It's definitely a thrill to see the innovation and high spirited efforts of this year's up and coming engineers!
Shortly after the 2022 event I discovered we placed 5th position overall and immediately hoped to enter in 2023 autonomously and I hope to volunteer and mentor for Wrexham University in 2024.
Why should students join the UAS Challenge?
MD: If a student is willing to get involved and give 110% effort and time to their team/ the challenge it will provide life changing experience and skill sets to take you well into any any aerospace or UAS career.
For me this has been proven in 2023 and if you step back and look at the companies that attend and help out / sponsor the event, even if your UAS does not fly the contacts you can make at the event are very worthwhile, career-wise.
It’s a great experience to learn processes and gain engineering experiences that would cost a great deal of money to do self-funded, not to forget the friends made along the way in university and after the flying each day on the campsite with a cold drink!