Complete Preliminary Design Methodology for Electric Multirotor

Unmanned platforms with a conventional fixed-wing configuration can be designed according to well-assessed aircraft sizing techniques. Conversely, the design of multirotor vehicles is still based mainly on scale-model enthusiastic experience. At present there has been a limited effort by the community in developing a systematic approach for sizing this unconventional class of flying vehicles. This paper proposes a revised version of a classical aircraft sizing methodology based on statistical data available in the literature, with the objective of preliminary sizing of an electric multirotor configuration, taking into account mission profile and a few performance requirements such as endurance or percentage of thrust.