21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-7.6.3

DESIGN METHODOLOGY FOR LOW SPEED HIGH ALTITUDE LONG ENDURANCE UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES

Altman A.
Cranfield University, United Kingdom

Keywords: design, low speed, high altitude, long endurance, uaf

High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UA V's) are being considered increasingly to perform an extensive range of tasks. Recent years have seen greater acceptance of UA V's for a wide variety of applications. The focus of this research is the creation of a conceptual design methodology specifically for the design of these aircraft. The primary challenge lies in the fact that there have been very few built (especially in the low speed regime), so there is a small parametric database. In addition, they have been "one-off' designs (none have gone into production). with many not achieving their published design goals. Key issues to be addressed are the lack of data on extremely high aspect ratio (22 < AR < 35) wing design, weight, and downwash angle prediction at the tailplane, propulsion system performance at altitude. low Reynolds number (Re < 1*10^6) drag data for airfoils, tail volume coefficients for HALE UAV's. The present code (written to operate in MS Windows) and methodology are flexible enough to consider a variety of possible configurations. In addition, the code is robust by allowing for the inclusion of future engine and wing profile drag data as it becomes available.

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