Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a game changing production technology for aerospace applications. Fused deposition modelling is one of the most widely used AM technologies and recently has gained much attention in the advancement of many products. This paper introduces an extensive review of fused deposition modelling and its application in the development of high performance unmanned aerial vehicles. The process methodology, materials, post processing, and properties of its products are discussed in details. Successful examples of using this technology for making functional, lightweight and high endurance unmanned aerial vehicles are also highlighted. In addition, major opportunities, limitations, and outlook of fused deposition modelling are also explored. The paper shows that the emerge of fused deposition modelling as a robust technique for unmanned aerial vehicles represents a good opportunity to produce compact, strong, lightweight structures, and functional parts with embedded electronic.2

Lakmal (2018) Additive manufacturing of porous structures for unmanned aerial vehicles applications. Advanced Engineering Materials, 20(9), p. 180029, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/adem.201800290. This article may be used for noncommercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.

Standard quadcopters are popular largely because of their mechanical simplicity relative to other hovering aircraft, low cost and minimum operator involvement. However, this simplicity imposes fundamental limits on the types of maneuvers possible due to its under-actuation. The dexterity and fault tolerance required for flying in limited spaces like forests and industrial infrastructures dictate the use of a bespoke dual-tilting quadcopter that can launch vertically, performs autonomous flight between adjacent obstacles and is even capable of flying in the event of the failure of one or two motors. This paper proposes an actuation concept to enhance the performance characteristics of the conventional under-actuated quadcopter. The practical formation of this concept is followed by the design, modeling, simulation and prototyping of a dual-axis tilting quadcopter. Outdoor flight tests using tilting rotors, to follow a trajectory containing adjacent obstacles, were conducted in order to compare the flight of conventional quadcopter with the proposed over-actuated vehicle. The results show that the quadcopter with tilting rotors provides more agility and mobility to the vehicle especially in narrow indoor and outdoor infrastructures.