Lauren Westfall, Senior Mechanical Engineering & Aerospace Concentration

Name: Lauren Westfall | Major: Mechanical Engineering | Semester: Spring 2025

My name is Lauren Westfall. I am a Senior majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Aerospace. I conducted my research on General Aviation Fixed Wing Aircraft Stall and Spin Accidents through the College of Engineering under my research professor, Dr. Neelakshi Majumdar. I was a member in her lab for around one and a half years and conducted all of my research on this topic in her lab.

My research focused on the causes of stall and spin accidents in general aviation. We chose this topic because it is one of the most fatal types of accidents in general aviation. More specifically, I found in my research over a ten year period that stall and spin occurrences accounted for thirty seven percent of all fatal general aviation accidents. This is over a third of all fatal general aviation accidents, which is why we decided this was the perfect research topic to go into depth on.

Starting out, I looked at what phase of flight the stall and spin occurred, whether that was take off, landing, or some other phase of flight. This was to find the most common phase of flight these accidents tend to happen in.  I also looked at a specific phase of flight, Low-Altitude Flying, to learn about the findings in those specific accidents. I used a combination of Microsoft Access and Excel as well as the data from the NTSB database to obtain information for every fixed wing general aviation stall and spin accident between 2013 and 2022. The research I conducted will hopefully aid in making general aviation safer and better for future pilots and passengers. It offers insight into the main causes and altitudes these specific types of accidents occur at to make pilots more aware of the dangers they face in those phases and at those altitudes.

I was able to find my mentor by looking online at the research opportunities on the UARK Mechanical Engineering page and I found research that interested me and emailed my professor. The biggest challenge I faced in conducting my research is that I was looking at a 10 year period and that meant that I had a lot of data to sort through. I used Microsoft Excel to organize a lot of my data and to help make graphs for visual representations of the numbers I was getting. Dr. Majumdar has helped me write a grant proposal, learn new ways of obtaining data on general aviation accidents, and helped guide me in writing my honors thesis.

I am graduating from the University of Arkansas at the end of this semester and will be moving to Wichita, Kansas where I have a job as an engineer for Textron Aviation. I will be working for them as a Sustainability Engineer helping to maintain their existing fleet of large cabin jets as well as all new large cabin jets sold. This means that I will be helping with any problems their jets that are over 12,000 pounds face after they leave the production floors and are sold to customers.