Conceptual Design, Analysis and Construction of a Fixed-Wing Unmanned Arial Vehicle for Oil and Gas Pipeline Surveillance

Abstract

Oil and Gas Pipelines consists of pipes, compressors and pumps. These are frequently located in environments that are difficult to monitor and secure (e.g., creeks and remote areas). Attacks or damage to such installations can lead to enormous ecological impact and loss of revenue. Developing and implementing monitoring systems that can continuously assess the state and condition of oil and gas pipelines is very essential. Current solutions for monitoring such facilities are very manual and risky. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) offers great new alternative solutions. In this study, we present a conceptual design of a UAV with a battery powered propulsion system for such application. Here, we show by example how a mission statement can be translated into a physical aircraft from first principle. Notably, five (5) novel mathematical equations were formulated to aid and optimise the design process. These novel equations basically relate the take-off mass of the aircraft with the wingspan, chord length and fuselage length. With such equations, for a designed take-off mass, there exist several variant of the aircraft concept by varying wingspan, chord length and fuselage length of the UAV. In addition, we used thrust-to-weight ratio in a novel approach to ensure that the power available at the propeller will be sufficient for the mission. For this phase of the design, the basic objective among others is to attain lift-off at a very short take off distance. The method proposed in this study proved to be very effective after several successful flight tests.

Nature-Inspired Design and Advanced Multi-Computational Investigations on the Mission Profile of a Highly Manoeuvrable Unmanned Amphibious Vehicle for Ravage Removals in Various Oceanic Environments

“…The relationship between wingspan, chord length, and wing area for a constant-chord swept-forward wing is given in Equation ( 5) [13,16,23,47,[53][54][55][56][57].…”

“…From the tropic bird, the primary design details concerning the first taper ratio is obtained, which is the slightly tilted constant-chord swept-forward wing. The swept angle formula is given in Equation ( 6) [13,16,23,47,[53][54][55][56][57].…”

“…Since the next part of the overall wing is planned to impose tapered with backward swept, the conventional equations for such a wing configuration has been attained [13,16,23,47,[53][54][55][56][57]. Especially, Equation ( 7) contains an analytical description of the planform area of the ta-pered with backward swept (TBS) wing and Equation ( 8) contains the analytical description of the aspect ratio of the TBS wing.…”

“…The estimation of the mean aerodynamic centre (MAC) and its location always play an important role in the arrangement of wings at the right location. The calculating procedures of MAC and its positions are given in Equations ( 10) and ( 11) [13,16,23,47,[53][54][55][56][57].…”

“…Thus, this imposed lifting device (rectangular wing) needs to work well in order to maintain the UAV in the desired depth. Based on the lightweight material consideration and conventional relationships, the comparative force analyses on UAV under hydrodynamic conditions are calculated and the data are listed in Table 6 [13,16,23,47,[53][54][55][56][57]. From Table 6, the force requirement by the wing immersed in hydro fluid is estimated, which lies between 23.2 N and 114 N. Since the hydro fluid is more complicated than an aerodynamic environment, the gust load effect and force generation due to the presence of hydrofoil are quite complicated.…”