Quality-of-Service-Centric Design and Analysis of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Area of Science:

• Aerospace Engineering
• Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Design

Background:

• Rapid advancements in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) present challenges in communication, coverage, and network efficiency.
• UAVs are increasingly adopted across diverse sectors including agriculture, defense, security, and traffic monitoring.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and develop an innovative blended-wing-body (BWB) configuration for next-generation UAV applications.
• To optimize the BWB framework considering parameters like vertical take-off and landing (VTOL), drag, and stability.

Main Methods:

• A standard design approach was employed to optimize the BWB framework.
• Extensive simulation experiments were conducted for performance analysis in a software environment.
• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) were used, including grid convergence tests for validation.

Main Results:

• The proposed BWB configuration exhibits significantly low interference drag, evenly distributed internal loads, and a reduced radar signature.
• Grid convergence tests confirmed the reliability of CFD analysis for induced velocity and equivalent stress.
• Mesh quality was achieved at 0.984 out of 1.

Conclusions:

• The developed BWB-UAV model is cost-effective and suitable for various maneuvering activities at reasonable speeds.
• The design is well-suited for complex, high-speed, next-generation UAV use cases.