Student Engineers at UCI Build a WWI Biplane

The sometimes tedious, and always difficult work of building a full-scale replica of a World War I Marine Corps biplane, the Curtis JN-4, “Jenny” has been taken on by the students of University of California, Irvine (UCI)’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE). Leading the demanding project from UCI’s side are project managers and mechanical engineering students Silvia Tinelli and Stuti Patel. 

The project is underway and about 25 percent done, but began “with a bunch of parts, drawings, and blueprints,” Tinelli explained. And it was, and continued to be, up to the students to tackle how to build the iconic plane. When first presented the project Tinelli’s first thought was “this is so cool” since she quickly recognized that the project would be a wonderful experience for UCI students as well as one that she “would love to be a part of,” she explained. 
 

Building a WWI Jenny

The Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum (FLAM) plans to greet visitors entering its doors with a historic A-4E Skyhawk above them in a rectangular hall. Visitors will then come upon a rotunda. “And hanging there will be this Jenny,” explained Glenn Roquemore, secretary and education committee chair of the group building the museum, the Flying Leathernecks Heritage Foundation.

The Jenny was a trainer for some of the very first aircraft in combat, and the very first one for the Marines. Pilots would work with the JN-4 Curtiss Jenny first before migrating to the DH-4 De Havilland—the first Marine Corps aircraft used in combat. It was a board member who came across a Jenny that had crashed years ago. The museum made the purchase thinking it would be fairly straightforward. 

“We knew we didn’t have the tail section, but [we pretty much had everything else]” Roquemore explained. “We even had the engine.” FLAM’s plan is to hang the Jenny and then construct the cylindrical non-load-bearing wall. All other (more than 18) aircraft will be hung after the Jenny. 

The restoration hangar on the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station is where all the action is taking place. It is where 80 students—many of whom are part of the local student ASME Section—set to work on the plane while construction begins on the museum 200 yards away. Patel is in the middle of it all. “Managing 80 students with different technical backgrounds, coordinating with FLAM staff, and even engaging high school visitors during hangar tours, each requires a different approach,” she explained, discussing the ongoing work of the project.

Starting from ground zero, she and Tinelli started the project by first assigning technical leads to four teams (fuselage, engine, tail, and wings), which were made up of 15 to 25 students each. They also serve as the technical leads for the wings team. 

The work is quite serious since the aircraft is being built as a replica built to museum standards and precise engineering specifications. Tinelli explained they were handed boxes and boxes of loose connectors, cables, and brackets. These parts needed to all be indexed back to the drawings, the fifth-year student explained. “Basically we were [initially] given a bunch of parts, and a bunch of drawings and blueprints, and [were told], ‘Here you go!’” she said. 

“We quickly discovered that many of the drawings we initially had were actually for the Curtiss JN-4 Canuck, the Canadian variant, rather than the original American Jenny we were trying to replicate,” Patel explained. This created a cascade of problems. “Without reliable reference drawings, our teams had to become detectives, cross-referencing museum pieces, historical photographs, and incomplete documentation to understand the exact specifications,” she said.

What should have been straightforward construction decisions became research projects, determining correct dimensions, understanding how components fit together, and ensuring the team was building the right aircraft, Patel explained. 

Relying on each other, aerospace engineering students, for example, was important. So was working with the experts that make up the FLAM staff. Patel explained that this close working relationship helped because they could rely on decades of expertise. “They are seasoned engineers who have worked on aircraft restoration, solved complex engineering problems, and have immense industry experience that you simply can’t learn in textbooks,” she said.

For example, for Patel what really surprised her the most about the build was understanding the intricate balance of forces in the Jenny’s wooden construction. “The wooden frame is surprisingly heavy compared to modern aircraft materials. Yet, the engineers of 1916 created an elegant solution using a network of cables, struts, and wooden beams that work together like a complex web. The flying wires create tension that pulls the wings up, while the landing wires and internal compression members push down and inward. Every cable and beam have a specific role in this delicate balance. If you remove one element, the entire wing structure could fail,” she said.

UCI student project

ASME Fellow Julian J. Rimoli, dean’s professor and chair of MAE, explained that the project began, first, as an initial meeting discussing the “possibility” of the university getting involved with FLAM. “At that stage it occurred to me that we needed not only great students but also great faculty that could guide them through the process,” Rimoli explained. 

And because they have “great experience with student projects and aircraft design,” he then got advisors, David Copp, associate professor of teaching and associate department chair, undergraduate studies for MAE at UCI, and Jacqueline Huynh, MAE assistant professor, on board.

It was, in fact, Copp and Huynh who together developed the course so that the students would receive credit for their hard work. In fact, when the department announced the project, “There was tremendous interest from students to get involved,” Copp explained. And if you count students who came with the second round of courses, 100 students have been part of the project so far, he said.

“The students have organized themselves and have taken on a large project executed (mostly) off-campus,” Copp acknowledged. He described experience related to building a historical aircraft from cleaning and cataloguing vintage parts to securing and manufacturing others. Students are learning woodworking and are using “laser scanning and 3D printing parts,” Copp said. Not to mention the critical real-world skill of making and assembling parts, he said.

UCI student engineers participate in hands-on, interdisciplinary learning. They design and build rockets, develop race cars, and launch autonomous drones. Yet, among these notable undertakings this project means so much more. It is a project that not only translates transportation theory into practice—welcoming complex, real-world problems to find solutions—it allows students to learn technical and professional skills such as teamwork, project management, and organization. 

Cathy Cecere is membership content program manager.