Final Project: Paper Planes DOE
Determining the Optimal Paper Airplane
Waleed Elkhalifa, Enrique Gonzalez, Cristian Vasquez, Tom Woods
San Jose State
... [Show More] University, College of Engineering,
ISE 105: Design of Experiments, Section 01
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1
Study Objective
The objective of this study was to design an optimal paper airplane based on 6 design
parameters. These parameters include paper type, wing length, body length, body width, angle of
the wing, and whether or not the design included a paper clip. Using these parameters, our team
was able to execute a ⅛ fractional factorial experiment in order to determine which parameters
had the most significant effect on the distance traveled by the paper airplanes. Our goal in doing
this was to maximize flight time in order to design an optimal final airplane. This task was
accomplished by using the average distance traveled in order to come to our conclusions. The
choice of paper airplane we decided was best is the classic dart airplane.
Procedure
We conducted a ⅛ fractional replication of a 2
k
factorial design for k=6 specified parameters,
all at high and low levels. A summary of these factors, which are labeled A through F, and their
treatments are tabulated in Figure 7 of the appendix section. We were met with the task of
carefully selecting 8 designs from the 64 possible combinations. We decided the most effective
way to randomly select our 8 initial designs was by using Minitab to randomly generate them.
These 8 initial designs and their specifications are shown in Table 1 in the results section.
The study was conducted by a group of four students: Waleed Elkhalifa, Enrique Gonzalez,
Cristian Vasquez, and Tom Woods. As a group, we first obtained the designs we needed to make
using Minitab, as explained previously. Once that was established, we designed each plane based
on the treatment level assigned to each of the six factors. The materials we used to construct our
paper airplanes were printer paper, construction paper, scissors, a ruler for measurements, and a
flat working surface. For working protocols, we concluded it was best for one person to make the
planes, another person to throw the airplanes, a different person measuring the distance, and a
last person to record the data, all of which was done with the intention of reducing any possible
source of error.
The resources we utilized in order to accomplish our task were Minitab, Dr. Supreeta Amin’s
Design of Experiments online lecture powerpoints, and Applied Statistics and Probability for
Engineers (6th Edition) by Douglas C. Montgomery and George C. Runger.
Results
After we designed our 8 initial airplanes, our next course of action was to record distances for
each plane, using n=4 replicates for a total of 32 runs. For each of the 8 designs, we calculated
the average distance traveled, and entered those values into our Minitab factorial design for our
responses. The experiment was carried out in an indoor environment to eliminate error that can
be caused by unwanted wind speeds. The distances we measured, as well as their averages, can
be seen in Table 6 of the appendix section. The factorial design that was generated by Minitab
after our responses were entered as shown in Figure 1 below. [Show Less]