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High Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Sattwik Suman Das Shashank S Tanveer Ali

AE 412: Aerospace Vehicle Design

Requirements
Border patrol for 6400 sq.km. Operational Ceiling-19.8 km (65000 ft) Maximum speed-147 km/hr Endurance-40 hours (Loiter) Conventional Runway takeoff (Maximum 600m)

Mission Profile

Payload (maximum weight 113kg)


1. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR): Sandia Labs MiniSAR -14 kg 2. Electro-Optic-Infrared Sensor: 23 kg (APM UAV Payloads) 3. Data link: (l-3 communications) :1kg

Source: http://www.sandia.gov/RADAR/index.html

Initial sizing
Weight fractions for the various operational phases were computed* Iteration using MATLAB

*Reference: Airplane Design by Jan Roskam

Existing UAV data


UAV RQ-1A Predator RQ-2B Pioneer Prowler Gnat 750 Heron Kentron RPV-2 Shadow 200 Shadow 600 Raptor-low Vixen Exdrone Freewing RQ-5A Hunter E-Hunter Hermes 450 WTO (kg) 2250 452 200 1126 2425 529 316 584 1880 200 91 383 1600 2100 992 WE (kg) 1150 304 117 560 1323 323 200 327 810 140 71 253 1190 1430 441

ln(WTO)

ln(WE)

Weight is found to be 1800 kg

Airfoil selection
Criterion: 1. Maximum Lift Coefficient 2. Aerodynamic efficiency 3. Off design aerodynamic characteristics

Databases Used
David Lednicers The Incomplete guide to Airfoil Usage UIUC Airfoil Co-ordinates Database

Program Used
Martin Hepperles JAVAFOIL

Airfoils considered
NACA 5 digit 63 series and 23 series NASA General Aviation airfoil series Selected airfoil: NACA 23015

Source: Airfoil Investigation Database

Wing Design
Low/mid wing No sweep back Fowler flaps

Constraint analysis

Constraint analysis, Contd

Roadblock
We get Power required as over 200 hp IC engines cannot be used

Solution?
Turboprop

Pratt and Whitney Canada PT 6A


Source: http://www.pwc.ca/en/engines/pt6a

Initial sizing II
Using DARCORPs Advanced Aircraft Analysis v2.5 Weight of the UAV is obtained as weight of the UAV as 1579.15 kg

Tail Sizing
Tails Considered: i. H Tail ii. V Tail

Typical H Tail

Why V Tail?

Typical V Tail

Image Courtesy: https://www.tubraunschweig.de/ism/forschung/ag-flzg/projektealt/nefa

Landing Gear: Tire sizing


We have used Raymers statistical method Assumption: Front tires carry 10 % of the aircrafts weight and back tires carry the remaining 90% 25+7 % margin

Configuration and layout


Pusher configuration: i. Frees up the nose of the aircraft, which allows the payloads to be placed in the front part of the fuselage. ii. Reduces the skin friction drag because the pusher location allows the aircraft to fly in undisturbed air. iii. Allows a reduction in the aircraft wetted area by shortening the fuselage.

Propeller diameter 2.3m

Disadvantages of Pusher configuration


The propeller has a reduced efficiency because it is forced to work with the disturbed airflow from fuselage, wing and tails. It requires a longer landing gear because the aft location causes the propeller to dip closer to the runway as the nose is lifted for take-off.

Layout

Fuel tanks are inside the wings

Refined sizing
We use Raymers formula for a turboprop aircraft From refined sizing, we have the take-off weight as 1547.889 kg.

Material selection
Fuselage: Composites inspired by Predator Wing skin: Al 2024 alloy clad with Zinc alloy for corrosion resistance

Why?

Weight estimation

With Reserve fuel fraction of 5%

CG estimation

3d views using Google Sketchup 8

Future Prospects
Limited Variable Configuration Longer Range Additional Payloads

Thank You

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