Design, control, aerodynamic performances, and structural integrity investigations of compact ducted drone with co-axial propeller for high altitude surveillance

Abstract Compact multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be operated in many challenging environmental conditions. In case the UAV requires certain considerations in designing like lightweight, efficient propulsion system and others depending upon the application, the hybrid UAV comes into play when the usual UAV types cannot be sufficient to meet the requirements. The propulsion system for the UAV was selected to be coaxial rotors because it has a high thrust-to-weight ratio and to increase the efficiency of the propulsion system, a unique propeller was proposed to achieve higher thrust. The proposed propeller was uniquely designed by analyzing various airfoil sections under different Reynolds’s number using X-Foil tool to obtain the optimum airfoil section for the propellers. Since the design with duct increases efficiency, the Hybrid UAV presented in this paper has the modified novel convergent–divergent (C–D)-based duct which is a simplified model of a conventional C–D duct. The yawing and rolling maneuverings of the UAV could be achieved by the thrust vectoring method so that the design is simpler from a structural and mechanical perspective. The use of UAVs has risen in recent years, especially compact UAVs, which can be applied for applications like surveillance, detection and inspection, and monitoring in a narrow region of space. The design of the UAV is modeled in CATIA, and its further performance enactment factors are picked from advanced computational simulations relayed bottom-up approach. The predominant computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and fluid structure interaction (FSI) investigations are imposed and optimized through Computational Analyses using Ansys Workbench 17.2, which includes analysis of structural behaviour of various alloys, CFRP and GFRP based composite materials. From the structural analysis Titanium alloy came out to be the best performing materials among the others by having lower total deformation and other parameters such as normal and equivalent stress. The dynamics control response is obtained using MATLAB Simulink. The validations are carried out on the propeller using a thrust stand for CFD and on the duct through a high-jet facility for structural outcomes to meet the expected outcome.