Structural Design and Analysis for High Altitude Long Endurance UAV

Research is being carried out at Korea Aerospace Research Institute with aim of design a HALE UAV(High Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Air Vehicle). HALE UAVs are ideally suited to provide surveillance, remote sensing and communication relay capabilities for both military and civilian applications. HALE UAVs typically cruise at an altitude between 15 km and 20 km, travelling at low speed and circling specific area of interest. Airframe structural point of view, weight reduction of the airframe structure is the most important method to improve the flight efficiency. High modulus CFRP(Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer) has been used in designing the structure in order to minimize the airframe weight. With respect to structural design and analysis, the key question is to decide an adequate airworthiness certification base to define suitable load cases for sizing of various structural components. In this study, FAR(Federal Aviation Regulation) 23 have constituted the guidance and benchmark throughout all structural studies. And the MSC/FlightLoads was introduced to analyze the flight loads for the HALE UAV. The MSC/FlightLoads can compute the flexible air load and analyzed loads are distributed on structural model directly. A preliminary structural concept was defined in accordance with the estimated inertial and aerodynamic loads. A FEM analysis was carried out using the MSC/Nastran code to predict the static and dynamic behaviour of UAV structure.

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