Students from Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University (AYBU) won first place with their project as part of the LIFT UP Industry-Focused Undergraduate Graduation Projects Program, organized by Turkish Aerospace Industries Inc. (TUSAŞ).
This year, 222 projects from 67 universities were eligible to participate in the LIFT UP Industry-Focused Undergraduate Graduation Projects program, organized by Turkish Aerospace Industries Inc. (TUSAŞ) since 2018. The final presentations of the program, in which the top 10 projects advanced to the finals, were held on August 14, 2025, at the Saim Dilek Conference Hall on the TUSAŞ campus. Our students, who qualified for the final round by placing among the top 10 projects, were awarded the first prize for their project, "Design, Manufacturing, and Testing of a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA)-Driven Landing Gear Hook Lock Mechanism," by a jury of seven senior executives from TAI.
The project, which was selected as the winner from among 222 projects, was academically advised by Prof. Dr. Ahmet PINARBAŞI, a Mechanical Engineering faculty member at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University's Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, and industrially advised by Hüseyin Cemal TAŞTAN, a Structural Design Engineer at TAI. AYBU Mechanical Engineering seniors Samet Can AKÇAY, Mahmut Esad ASLAN, and Faruk ÇATAL, who conducted the research on the project, successfully completed the design, manufacturing, and testing phases of the project, crowning their dedicated efforts with the first-place award.
As part of this project, our students designed a lightweight, compact, energy-efficient, and self-contained landing gear hook lock system using electrical resistance-activated nickel-titanium-based shape memory alloys, replacing the current hydraulic, pneumatic, or electromechanical landing gear hook lock system. They developed a landing gear hook locking mechanism with a locking feature. This innovative project, supported by TAI support as well as the TÜBİTAK 2209-B University Students Industrial Research Projects Support Program, resulted in a patent application and preparations for an international article.
We congratulate our students, their academic and industrial advisors, on this significant achievement.
