Systematic Approach to Conceptual Design Selection for Hybrid UAVs using Structured Design Methods

摘要

Selecting a baseline aircraft configuration during the aircraft conceptual design phase is crucial as it significantly affects different aspects of the aircraft such as its performance, design, and design development process. Generally, making a decision about the baseline configuration in the aerospace industry is a very difficult process. Ideally, based on specific requirements it needs to consider all possible aircraft configurations during the selection process. Due to the absence of formal methods for selecting aircraft configurations, employing designers' experience and intuition and/or replicating/evolving existing configurations for similar aircraft remain the predominant methods used, especially for small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Despite their numerous advantages, such approaches may result in selecting and developing poor configurations that do not achieve all the design requirements especially when designing novel unconventional aircraft or used by inexperience engineers. Poor configurations result in significant increase in design and manufacturing costs and time, as they typically lead to changes and rework in the later design phases. In an attempt to provide effective tools for aircraft configuration selection, this paper presents a systematic approach to facilitate the process of selecting the best baseline configuration for hybrid UAVs using structured design methods. The proposed approach helps designers at all levels of expertise make well-formulated decisions based on either a set of detailed design requirements or on the initial customer's thoughts. The developed approach considers all the necessary aspects that occur at the conceptual design phase including the definition and formulation of the problem, the identification and prioritization of all possible alternatives for the UAV components, the generation of the candidate configurations, the selection of the best baseline configuration, and the evaluation of the selected configuration. The use of the proposed methodology is exemplified by applying it to the selection of the best configuration for a conceptual highly maneuverable tiltrotor UAV.