GLIDER WING AERODYNAMIC DESIGN AND OPTIMIZATION FOR UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE SURVEILLANCE APPLICATIONS

Abstract

The widespread adoption of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can be traced to its flexibility and wide adaptability to various operating conditions and applications, comparably low cost of construction and maintenance and environmental friendliness as they can be easily configured for electric power. The use of electric power also favours its low noise applications such as surveillance. A major issue associated with surveillance however is the compromise between Range and Endurance operation modes. The Range mode relates to being able to cover longer distances while the Endurance mode relates to spending longer times in the atmosphere for a fixed charge. Trying to balance the interplay of these parameters gave rise to a Multiobjective Optimization where the objectives are somewhat conflicting. This resulted in a set of Pareto solutions which are a set of design parameters (primarily Angle of Attack) that satisfy the joint requirements of the performance parameters of Range and Endurance. This study first considered a baseline aerodynamic design using traditional design methods. Design of Experiment techniques were then used to select the most favourable design points. This model was then used to build an input framework for Genetic Optimization algorithm deployed in the Global Optimization Toolbox of MATLAB. Aerodynamic analysis was carried out using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) tools, namely JavaFoil and COMSOL Multiphysics. The result of this research shows that most of the region associated with medium Angle of Attack setting (7 degrees) jointly satisfies good Range (objective function value of 0.050 – 0.051) and Endurance (objective function value of 0.053 – 0.056) performance in glider flight.