Performance and Life Cycle Cost Comparison of Optimized Fixed-Wing VTOL UAV Configurations

Fixed-wing VTOL UAV are unmanned aerial vehicles capable of both hover and fast forward flight. A variety of aircraft layouts are imaginable which provide these capabilities. To answer the question for the best layout for a specific application, a fixed-wing VTOL aircraft preliminary design tool was implemented and extended by a cost analysis. While aerodynamic, structural and system sizing, performance estimation and mass modelling rely on conventional techniques, e.g. the interaction of rotor/propeller flow with wing and fuselage is fixed-wing VTOL specific. Due to the sensitivity of an all-electric aircraft on power supply, battery modelling is a given special focus. Four fixed-wing VTOL configurations were implemented and compared. For comparison, all four aircraft were optimized by varying of their basic geometry parameters. The resulting performance and cost breakdowns not only reveal the best 5kg-class aircraft for the exemplary land survey mission, it also sets the basis to judge on the economic profitability of the UAV application.      «

Fixed-wing VTOL UAV are unmanned aerial vehicles capable of both hover and fast forward flight. A variety of aircraft layouts are imaginable which provide these capabilities. To answer the question for the best layout for a specific application, a fixed-wing VTOL aircraft preliminary design tool was implemented and extended by a cost analysis. While aerodynamic, structural and system sizing, performance estimation and mass modelling rely on conventional techniques, e.g. the...     »