UT Arlington College of Engineering
UT Arlington

Student Profile
Kotaro Tagawa – Solutions with a Hands-On Approach



Kotaro Tagawa likes to know how things operate. He takes things apart, puts them together, makes them work better. His love of invention and discovery started in his home in Tokushima, Japan, where he built his first model airplane at the age of four, and continues today at UT Arlington, where he is working on a conceptual design of a hydrogen-fueled business jet for his senior design project.

Kotaro is a aerospace engineering major, a scholarship winner and a lab assistant to Dr. Frank Lu. A little over a year ago, Dr. Lu mentioned the need to improve aerodynamics laboratory instruction to bring it up to date with current measurement technologies and provide a cutting-edge educational experience in undergraduate experimentation. Kotaro volunteered to take on the project.

This was not a simple task. The overhaul required more than a simple addition of new instrumentation; to do it properly required four individual projects – develop a calibration rig for wind tunnel force balance, computerize the data acquisition system of the force balance, conduct a force and balance experiment using a standard, symmetrical airfoil shape, and develop computer simulation model for the experiment.

Who knew it would take him a year to complete.

But Kotaro was a “do it yourself” kind of person, one who understood the overall requirements of the project, one who wanted the four components of the project to merge methodically.

He began by removing obstructions in the wind tunnel, providing a less-turbulent flow of air. He then removed manually-operated gauges and installed new, electronic ones. Later, Kotaro worked with the machine shop to create an aluminum NACA 0012 airfoil, the type used in basic aerodynamics instruction.

The development of computerized experiments, ones that students could easily run and understand, was the most difficult task. This involved computations for angle of attack, lift, drag, pitch moment and force measurements. Kotaro wrote the programs and an accompanying instruction manual.

“His efforts helped to move the lab from the Stone Age to the space age,” said Dr. Lu. “What he accomplished is well above and beyond the call.”