The Ultimate

Paper Airplane
Darshan, Krishh, Ezra
Types of Airplanes
There are four categories of paper airplanes depending on what they
are designed for:
- Designed for Distance
- Designed for Maximum Time Aloft
- Designed for Aerobatic tricks
- Designed for just a decorative look
Objective
Design a paper airplane that can beat world record airplanes in
terms of :
- Distance
- Time Aloft
The Paper Airplanes
1) The Suzanne (Longest distance, 200 ft+)
2) The Sky King (Longest time aloft, 29 seconds +)
3) Boomerang Plane (Most consecutive catches of returning paper
airplanes, 310+)
A summary of the three planes
The Suzanne
Attributes of the paper airplane:
- The surface area of the wings of the Suzanne was 214u2
- The Fuselage is 4mm in thickness.
- Pointed tip
- Triangular Front
Distance
Factors that is advantageous for the Suzanne.
- The first factor that helps a paper airplane fly a long distance is
the surface area of its wings that increases lift.
- The second factor that helps the plane to fly far is its thin
fuselage that reduces drag.
- The third factor is the pointed tip of the plane that also reduces
drag.
- The last factor is its areodynamically shaped triangular front
that also reduces drag.
Mathematical Aspect
To Tackle distance:
- Let the surface area of our original paper airplane be x let the
width of the fuselage be y and let the tip of the paper plane be z.
- Wing surface area : x = 214 unit2
- Fuselage width: y = 4mm
- Tip: z < 1mm
The Sky King
- The wings‘ surface area is very large and thus the wing loading
is low 228 unit 2
- It has ailerons - helps the plane to stabilize itself
- Flat tip - increase drag
Time Aloft
- We know that the wings’ surface area has to be bigger 228 unit2
- We know that the tip‘s width has to be more than or equal to 3mm
- We also know that the thickness of the fuselage has to be equal to or more than 4mm.

To tackle Time Aloft:

Let the wings surface area be x, let the fuselage width be y and let the tip’s width be z

Wing: x > 228 unit 2

Fuselage: y ≥ 4mm

Tip: z ≥ 3mm
The boomerang plane
This plane is interesting

What makes it come back to the thrower?

- Adjusted ailerons to help it tilt

- Design the plane such that the plane tilts by default.

With this information, we know that the size of the right/left wing has to be
slightly heavier than the other wing
A visual representation