Static aeroelastic optimisation to wing structural weight estimation of an extremely manoeuvrable UAV

Abstract

Estimating the wing structural weight of an extremely manoeuvrable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) during conceptual design has proven to be a significant challenge due to its high load factor (the ratio of an aircraft lift to its weight). The traditional empirical method relies on existing statistical data of previously built aircraft, then is inadequate for the innovative UAV structure design which can endure extremely manoeuvrable load (load factor is greater than 9g). In this paper, the finite element model for wing structure of an extremely manoeuvrable UAV with foreplane was built, and the structural weight was estimated by static aeroelastic optimisation considering structural strength and buckling constraints. The methodology developed here is only consisted of three components, which is much less than that for existing method, thus the procedure developed here sacrificed some accuracy, but it's faster and more suitable for aircraft conceptual design. It was validated by the overlap between the weights given by the methodology, and the results from empirical equations when the load factors are less than 9g. Through the analysis procedure developed, the wing structural weights of the extremely manoeuvrable UAV were given under different load cases (load factor changes from 5g to 12g).