Simulation-based Long-range Flight Performance Evaluation of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

Abstract

As Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) which can fly only by controlling the rotor thrust are expected to be used in various fields in the future, so the demand for long-range flight is expected to increase. For instance, it is an effective application that UAVs is used to inspect offshore wind power generations but wind, flight paths or navigations affect flight efficiency and flyable range when operating in a real environment. It is useful for optimizing flight performance to use simulations in various cases before flying there to obtain parameters. Therefore, this study constructs an aircraft model and flight environment that are close to an actual environment and perform simulations in some simple cases. In the future, the parameters will be applied to multi-rotor drones or vertical take-off and landing aircrafts (VTOL) and inspect offshore wind power generations using them. The report explain research into the development of a simulation using MATLAB/Simulink that considering wind effects and the flight evaluation of long-range flight.