Design and Construction of a UAV VTOL in Ducted-Fan and Tilt-Rotor Configuration

Abstract

This paper presents the development of an hybrid Unmanned Aerial Vehicle that combines the capabilities of Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) as well as the hover flight of an helicopter, with the autonomy, load capacity and speed offered by an airplane. We start from an aircraft concept that uses the Tilt-Rotor configuration to perform the transition phase from one flight mode to another and simultaneously we used Ducted-Fans for increasing the flight performance during the vertical flight phase. The aerodynamic design is developed using computational tools, such as XFLR5 for preliminary design and ANSYS FLuent®for the verification of the preliminary fixed wing design. While for the vertical flight, experimental tests were conducted in order to determine the lift system requirements by using Ducted-Fans. Afterwards, the manufacturing process derived from the aerodynamic design is presented. The avionics developed is described for handling the control surfaces during the airplane mode and the main lift system during the vertical flight as well as the integration of mechanism and sensors used. Finally, the obtained results from the conducted vertical flight tests at outdoors environments are presented in order to show the effectiveness of the aircraft concept.