Lily Biggs
BEng Aerospace and Aeronautical Engineering
University of Liverpool
Third Year
This year I have been mainly working on my final engineering project. I have been studying the potential of ionic wind for a light aircraft propulsion system. I have designed and 3D printed two systems: one to characterise the displacement caused by the ionic wind and the other to spin a small aircraft model. Both have been very successful and produced interesting results. Despite the closure of the university, I still managed to build a small aircraft model which rotated with no propulsive mechanism other than the ionic wind.
Second Year
In my second year reading Aeronautical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Leeds I studied:
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Engineering Mechanics
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Vibration and Control
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Design and Manufacture
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Economics and Management
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Mechatronics and Measurement Systems
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Thermofluids
My favourite module was Vibration and Control as it was very complex and took a lot of understanding but led to a real sense of satisfaction when it finally made sense. I also enjoyed the maths elements of Engineering Mechanics, especially Laplace transforms. We also visited the Farnborough Air Show (the image above shows inside an aircraft carrier there).
This year I have worked on quite a few engineering projects, including:
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Modelling improvements to a lock
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Designing and building a Mars rover
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Designing and building a water powered turbine
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Completing an economic analysis of electric cars
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Modelling the vibration of an aero engine
I most enjoyed designing and building the turbine: we calculated the number of buckets needed and then designed the turbine using Solidworks. When we manufactured the turbine and tested it, we generated around 20kW of power in 10 seconds!
Our Martian Rover