Design Optimization Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Over the last years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gradually become a more efficient alternative to manned aircraft, and at present, they are being deployed in a broad spectrum of both military as well as civilian missions. This has led to an unprecedented market expansion with new challenges for the aeronautical industry, and as a result, it has created a need to implement the latest design tools in order to achieve faster idea-to-market times and higher product performance. As a complex engineering product, UAVs are comprised of numerous sub-systems with intricate synergies and hidden dependencies. To this end, Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) is a method that can identify systems with better performance through the concurrent consideration of several engineering disciplines under a common framework. Nevertheless, there are still many limitations in MDO, and to this date, some of the most critical gaps can be found in the disciplinary modeling, in the analysis capabilities, and in the organizational integration of the method. As an aeronautical product, UAVs are also expected to work together with other systems and to perform in various operating environments. In this respect, System of Systems (SoS) models enable the exploration of design interactions in various missions, and hence, they allow decision makers to identify capabilities that are beyond those of each individual system. As expected, this significantly more complex formulation raises new challenges regarding the decomposition of the problem, while at the same time, it sets further requirements in terms of analyses and mission simulation. In this light, this thesis focuses on the design optimization of UAVs by enhancing the current MDO capabilities and by exploring the use of SoS models. Two literature reviews serve as the basis for identifying the gaps and trends in the field, and in turn, five case studies try to address them by proposing a set of expansions. On the whole, the problem is approached from a technical as well as an organizational point of view, and thus, this research aims to propose solutions that can lead to better performance and that are also meaningful to the Product Development Process (PDP). Having established the above foundation, this work delves firstly into MDO, and more specifically, it presents a framework that has been enhanced with further system models and analysis capabilities, efficient computing solutions, and data visualization tools. At a secondary level, this work addresses the topic of SoS, and in particular, it presents a multi-level decomposition strategy, multi-fidelity disciplinary models, and a mission simulation module. Overall, this thesis presents quantitative data which aim to illustrate the benefits of design optimization on the performance of UAVs, and it concludes with a qualitative assessment of the effects that the proposed methods and tools can have on both the PDP and the organization.

Over the last decade, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have experienced an accelerated growth, and nowadays they are being deployed in a variety of missions that have traditionally been covered by manned aircraft. This unprecedented market expansion has created new and unforeseen challenges for the manufacturing industry which is now called to further reduce the idea-to-market times while simultaneously delivering designs of even higher performance. In this environment of uncertainty and risk, it is without a doubt crucial for the involved actors to find ways to secure their strategic advantage, and hence, implementing the latest design tools has become a critical consideration in every Product Development Process (PDP). To this end, a method that has been frequently applied in the PDP and has shown many successful results in the development of complex engineering products is Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO). In general, MDO can bring additional knowledge regarding the best-suited designs much earlier in the process, and in this respect, it can lead to significant cost and time savings by reducing the total number of refinement iterations. Nevertheless, the organizational and cultural integration of MDO has been often overlooked, while at the same time, several technical aspects of the method for UAV design are still at an elementary level. On the whole, research on MDO is showing a slow progress, and to this date, there are many limitations in both the disciplinary models and the available analysis capabilities. In light of the above, this thesis focuses on the particulars of the MDO methodology, and more specifically, on how it can be best adapted and evolved in order to enhance the development process of UAVs. The primary objective is to study the current trends and gaps of the MDO practices in UAV applications, and subsequently to build upon that and explore how these can be included in a roadmap that will be able to serve a guide for newcomers in the field. Compared to other studies, the problem is herein approached from both a technical as well as organizational perspective, and thus, this research not only aims to propose techniques that can lead to better designs but also solutions that will be meaningful to the PDP. Having established the above foundation, this work shows that the traditional MDO frameworks for UAV design have been neglecting several important features, and it elaborates on how those novel elements can be modeled in order to enable a better integration of MDO into the organizational functions. Overall, this thesis presents quantitative and qualitative data which illustrate the effectiveness of the new framework enhancements in the development process of UAVs, and concludes with discussions on the possible improvement directions towards achieving more and better MDO capabilities.

This book provides fundamental principles, design procedures, and design tools for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with three sections focusing on vehicle design, autopilot design, and ground system design. The design of manned aircraft and the design of UAVs have some similarities and some differences. They include the design process, constraints (e.g., g-load, pressurization), and UAV main components (autopilot, ground station, communication, sensors, and payload). A UAV designer must be aware of the latest UAV developments; current technologies; know lessons learned from past failures; and they should appreciate the breadth of UAV design options. The contribution of unmanned aircraft continues to expand every day and over 20 countries are developing and employing UAVs for both military and scientific purposes. A UAV system is much more than a reusable air vehicle or vehicles. UAVs are air vehicles, they fly like airplanes and operate in an airplane environment. They are designed like air vehicles; they have to meet flight critical air vehicle requirements. A designer needs to know how to integrate complex, multi-disciplinary systems, and to understand the environment, the requirements and the design challenges and this book is an excellent overview of the fundamentals from an engineering perspective. This book is meant to meet the needs of newcomers into the world of UAVs. The materials are intended to provide enough information in each area and illustrate how they all play together to support the design of a complete UAV. Therefore, this book can be used both as a reference for engineers entering the field or as a supplementary text for a UAV design course to provide system-level context for each specialized topic.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Design and Technology provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to unmanned aerial systems (UAS) technology basics. The book presents clear, concise guidance on UAS system design, components, control, and operations fundamentals. Additional chapters look at unmanned aerial regulations and ethics and the historical background of UAS technology. This textbook offers a well-rounded look at unmanned flight technology, making it an ideal primer for aviation and aerospace students and anyone interested in learning more about unmanned aerial systems, including engineers, technicians, drone and flight hobbyists, and civil aviation organization officials.

Provides a comprehensive introduction to the design and analysis of unmanned aircraft systems with a systems perspective Written for students and engineers who are new to the field of unmanned aerial vehicle design, this book teaches the many UAV design techniques being used today and demonstrates how to apply aeronautical science concepts to their design. Design of Unmanned Aerial Systems covers the design of UAVs in three sections—vehicle design, autopilot design, and ground systems design—in a way that allows readers to fully comprehend the science behind the subject so that they can then demonstrate creativity in the application of these concepts on their own. It teaches students and engineers all about: UAV classifications, design groups, design requirements, mission planning, conceptual design, detail design, and design procedures. It provides them with in-depth knowledge of ground stations, power systems, propulsion systems, automatic flight control systems, guidance systems, navigation systems, and launch and recovery systems. Students will also learn about payloads, manufacturing considerations, design challenges, flight software, microcontroller, and design examples. In addition, the book places major emphasis on the automatic flight control systems and autopilots. Provides design steps and procedures for each major component Presents several fully solved, step-by-step examples at component level Includes numerous UAV figures/images to emphasize the application of the concepts Describes real stories that stress the significance of safety in UAV design Offers various UAV configurations, geometries, and weight data to demonstrate the real-world applications and examples Covers a variety of design techniques/processes such that the designer has freedom and flexibility to satisfy the design requirements in several ways Features many end-of-chapter problems for readers to practice Design of Unmanned Aerial Systems is an excellent text for courses in the design of unmanned aerial vehicles at both the upper division undergraduate and beginning graduate levels.

This book discusses how to plan the time-variant placements of the UAVs served as base station (BS)/relay, which is very challenging due to the complicated 3D propagation environments, as well as many other practical constraints such as power and flying speed. Spectrum sharing with existing cellular networks is also investigated in this book. The emerging unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been playing an increasing role in the military, public, and civil applications. To seamlessly integrate UAVs into future cellular networks, this book will cover two main scenarios of UAV applications as follows. The first type of applications can be referred to as UAV Assisted Cellular Communications. Second type of application is to exploit UAVs for sensing purposes, such as smart agriculture, security monitoring, and traffic surveillance. Due to the limited computation capability of UAVs, the real-time sensory data needs to be transmitted to the BS for real-time data processing. The cellular networks are necessarily committed to support the data transmission for UAVs, which the authors refer to as Cellular assisted UAV Sensing. To support real-time sensing streaming, the authors design joint sensing and communication protocols, develop novel beamforming and estimation algorithms, and study efficient distributed resource optimization methods. This book targets signal processing engineers, computer and information scientists, applied mathematicians and statisticians, as well as systems engineers to carve out the role that analytical and experimental engineering has to play in UAV research and development. Undergraduate students, industry managers, government research agency workers and general readers interested in the fields of communications and networks will also want to read this book.

Unmanned Aerial Systems: Theoretical Foundation and Applications presents some of the latest innovative approaches to drones from the point-of-view of dynamic modeling, system analysis, optimization, control, communications, 3D-mapping, search and rescue, surveillance, farmland and construction monitoring, and more. With the emergence of low-cost UAS, a vast array of research works in academia and products in the industrial sectors have evolved. The book covers the safe operation of UAS, including, but not limited to, fundamental design, mission and path planning, control theory, computer vision, artificial intelligence, applications requirements, and more. This book provides a unique reference of the state-of-the-art research and development of unmanned aerial systems, making it an essential resource for researchers, instructors and practitioners. Covers some of the most innovative approaches to drones Provides the latest state-of-the-art research and development surrounding unmanned aerial systems Presents a comprehensive reference on unmanned aerial systems, with a focus on cutting-edge technologies and recent research trends in the area

Many complex aeronautical design problems can be formulated with efficient multi-objective evolutionary optimization methods and game strategies. This book describes the role of advanced innovative evolution tools in the solution, or the set of solutions of single or multi disciplinary optimization. These tools use the concept of multi-population, asynchronous parallelization and hierarchical topology which allows different models including precise, intermediate and approximate models with each node belonging to the different hierarchical layer handled by a different Evolutionary Algorithm. The efficiency of evolutionary algorithms for both single and multi-objective optimization problems are significantly improved by the coupling of EAs with games and in particular by a new dynamic methodology named “Hybridized Nash-Pareto games”. Multi objective Optimization techniques and robust design problems taking into account uncertainties are introduced and explained in detail. Several applications dealing with civil aircraft and UAV, UCAV systems are implemented numerically and discussed. Applications of increasing optimization complexity are presented as well as two hands-on test cases problems. These examples focus on aeronautical applications and will be useful to the practitioner in the laboratory or in industrial design environments. The evolutionary methods coupled with games presented in this volume can be applied to other areas including surface and marine transport, structures, biomedical engineering, renewable energy and environmental problems. This book will be of interest to students, young scientists and engineers involved in the field of multi physics optimization.