Conceptual Design and Aerodynamic Analysis of Tail-Sitter VTOL UAV
Keywords:
Tail-Sitter VTOL UAV, Conceptual Design, Aerodynamics, Computational Fluid DynamicsAbstract
Tail-Sitter VTOL unmanned aerial vehicle (Tail-Sitter VTOL UAV) is one of the most popular UAV novel technology for various missions. Compact size, light weight, user-friendly, and reasonable flight endurance of this configuration are the main reasons for many applications. However, design methodology to meet the mission’s requirements for this type of UAV is the most difficult and challenge, especially complexities of the design processes. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual design process for Tail-Sitter VTOL UAV. This methodology is simple and straightforward methodology to generate a design procedures and performance constraint diagram for selecting the critical performance parameters for Tail-sitter VTOL UAV systems. Moreover, to ensure the design methodology, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is also integrated into design processes to analyze the aerodynamics of layout design. It also allows the designer to verify initial aerodynamic estimations and performance analysis. As a result, this methodology provides rapid selection of the optimum preliminary sizing parameters without the complexities compared with the traditional numerical optimization methods.
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