Gross Weight Estimation

[ptc-5267692]

My team and I are stumped in a section of our design process. We are currently trying to estimate the gross weight of our designs (step 2.1.1.1). We have tools necessary for our design, (i.e. the Mathcad and Excel sheets as well as the Baseline CAD Models) but we don't know where to start. There are two different excel sheets that give weight estimations and we do not know which to use or how to get the specific inputs for them. Mathcad is also confusing us, as there are references made to FloEFD and if I'm not mistaken, we aren't using that software this year.

Basically, we were wondering how to go about performing the gross weight estimation and when to start using the Mathcad sheets.

Moreover, according to the workflow, after estimating the gross weight, we are to scale the model down so that our camera makes up 10-20% of the total weight. Does this mean we take the empty weight we estimated and resize it so that, for example, a 5 kg camera would be part of a 50 kg UAV?

Thanks in advance.

[ptc-5247756]

Don't worry about the FloEFD. I've updated the MATHCAD worksheet to reflect that it will only be used in the national challenge.

Stand-by for a better answer on the weight estimate. We want to investigate the source of confusion

[ptc-5247756]

As far as the weight estimation is concerned:

Some MATHCAD worksheets read information directly from the Configurator spreadsheet. I would start with the Weight and Balance and Cost Calculators and then ensure that the information in the Configurator speadsheet is consistent with them.

Note that information for computation of the Objective function is entered by hand from the various soruces such as the Cost Calculator.