A Study on Transient Performance Characteristics of the Canard Rotor Wing Type Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Propulsion System During Flight Mode Transition

Abstract

A propulsion system of the CRW (Canard rotor wing) type UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) was composed of the turbojet engine, exhaust nozzles (including some tip jet nozzles and a main nozzle), and the duct system (including straight ducts, curved ducts, and master valve). The CRW-type UAV has three different flight modes, such as the rotary wing mode for takeoff and landing, the high-speed forward flight mode with the fixed wing, and the transition flight mode between the previously mentioned two flight modes. In order to evaluate transient performance characteristics of the CRW-type UAV propulsion system during flight mode transition, the propulsion system was modeled using SIMULINK®, which is a user-friendly graphical-user-interface-(GUI) type dynamic analysis tool provided by MATLAB, in this study. The transition flight mode between the rotary wing mode and the fixed wing mode was simulated by considering area variation of the master valve and the main exhaust nozzle. In order to verify acceptability of the main turbojet engine model, performance simulation results using SIMULINK were compared to results using the commercial program GSP. Through this simulation, proper operation of the master valve and the variable area main nozzle can be found for safe flight transition. Therefore, performance characteristics were investigated depending on various angle positions of the master valve.