MBUYISENI NHLAPO

Detail-orientated Final year Aeronautical Engineering Student adept at making critical decisions, managing deadlines and conducting team reviews. With expertise in analysis and quantitative problem-solving skills, dedicated to growth and improvements. Dedicated student with experience in achieving tangible results and cross-team collaboration. Proactive and excited to partner with like-minded individuals to achieve goals.

Introduction to Aeronautics:

Aircraft Performance Analysis

• Studied Do328JET and benchmarked against ERJ-145LR and CRJ200.
• Built weight, drag, and thrust models. Derived stall speeds, drag polar, and field lengths at ISA sea level and Johannesburg 25 C.
• Quantified climb, cruise, and SAR.
• Produced V-N and SEP turn analyses, stability and trim, and one-engine-inoperative performance. Implemented in Excel and MATLAB.

Mechatronics I:

Autonomous Kitchen Assistant Robot

• Designed, built, and programmed an autonomous robot for a timed kitchen task. Navigated from charging bay, identified ingredient color, and placed items at the correct counter zones
• Integrated sensors and actuators: 2 ultrasonic, 1 IR rangefinder, color sensor, IMU, 3 micro servos, twin DC drive. Arduino and C++
• Implemented PID control, sensor calibration, and obstacle avoidance around restricted areas
• Delivered tested run on mirrored courses. Produced an A1 poster for an industry audience
• Outcomes: autonomous navigation, color sorting, pickup and placement, start-to-stop without manual input. Teamwork, debugging, LiPo SOP compliance

Mechatronics II:

Aggressive Maneuver Stabilization for a Minidrone

• Modeled a full nonlinear drone in MATLAB and Simulink. Chosen states, inputs, and key nonlinearities.
• Linearized around hover. Built SISO channels for attitude and altitude.
• Designed controllers with root locus and PID to recover hover from a freehand throw, free fall, and upside-down starts. Held hover under aggressive inputs.
• Ran time and frequency domain analyses. Compared linear vs nonlinear responses. Assessed stability margins.
• Defined performance specs. Tuned gains. Verified against specs in simulation.
• Produced code, report, and a demo video. Worked in a team of four. Aligned with the MathWorks Challenge brief.

Aircraft Structures I:

Wing structural analysis

• Analyzed a rectangular LSA wing.
• Built an Excel model for shear flow. Computed panel shear stress at y = 0.4, 1.8, 4.0 m using multi-cell torsion (Bredt-Batho) and web/skin rules.
• Calculated bending deflection and twist every 0.1 m from root to tip under polynomial lift.
• Applied aluminium data: E 73 GPa, ν 0.33, shear strength 200 MPa. Checked stress versus allowable.
• Produced a one-page A3 poster on structural efficiency improvements.

Aircraft Structures II:

Fuselage frame analysis

• Analyzed a combat-aircraft fuselage frame under different loads
• Used complementary energy to compute joint-alignment loads and circumferential stress around the frame, with select point checks.
• Assessed effect of horizontal braces. Found brace loads, rotations, and updated stress distribution.
• Built a shell-element FE model to replicate the scenario, matched trends, and compared results with plots.
• Delivered documented code and a poster.

Aerodynamics:

Wing twist and taper study

• Reverse-engineered a STOL wing. Framed a scenario and problem statement.
• Generated 2D airfoil data in XFOIL/XFLR5 at target Reynolds numbers.
• Built two non-Shrenk methods for lift distribution. Ran 5 twist cases and 5 taper ratios. Added elliptical reference on each plot.
• Quantified Oswald efficiency sensitivity to twist and taper. Produced verification and validation steps with traceable methods.
• Delivered group methods and results, plus an individual 600-word critical analysis, reflection, and peer assessment.

Final Year Design Topic:

• Underground Inspection of illegal mining (hybrid drone/crawler concept developed as solution)

Final Year Research Topic:

• Investigation of the effect of Reynolds number on the aerodynamics of accelerating spheres.