• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.14-26
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• 2005

A tilt-rotor aircraft has various flight modes : helicopter, airplane, and conversion. Each of flight mode has unique and nonlinear flight characteristics. Therefore the gain schedules for whole flight envelope are required for effective flight performance. This paper proposes collective, flap, and nacelle angle scheduler for whole flight envelope of the Smart UAV(Unmanned Air Vehicle) based on CAMRAD(Comprehensive Analytical Model of Rotorcraft Aerodynamics and Dynamics) II analysis results. The scheduler designs are improved so that the pitch attitude angle of helicopter mode was minimized. The range of scheduler are reduced inside of engine performance limits. The conversion corridor and rotor governor are suggested also.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.15 no.1 s.94
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• pp.63-71
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• 2005

In this study, structural vibration analyses of a composite smart unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) have been conducted considering dynamic hub-loads of tilt-rotor. Practical computational structural dynamics technique based on the finite element method is applied using MSC/NASTRAN. The present smart UAV(TR-S2) structural model is constructed as full 3D configurations with both the helicopter flight mode and the airplane flight mode. Modal based transient response and frequency response analyses are used to efficiently investigate vibration characteristics of structure and installed electronic equipments. It is typically shown that the helicopter flight mode with the 90-deg tilting angle is the most critical case for the induced vibration of installed electronic equipments in the front.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.40-46
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• 2021

In this study, an aerodynamic configuration design and study on performance enhancement of a tilt-rotor UAV were conducted for improving mission capabilities compared to multi-copter type UAV, MC-1/2/3 developed for disaster and policing operation. To improve performance, a new TR5X configuration was developed by modifying the fuselage and tail shape of TR60 UAV and additionally attaching an extended wing to the nacelle. Aerodynamic performances of TR60 and TR5X were compared through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. In addition, flight performance analysis of full aircraft was conducted. Results showed that main performance requirements of TR5X were satisfied.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.120-131
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• 2016

The full results of troubleshooting process related to the flight control system of a tilt-rotor type UAV in the flight tests are described. Flight tests were conducted in helicopter, conversion, and airplane modes. The vehicle was flown using automatic functions, which include speed-hold, altitude-hold, heading-hold, guidance modes, as well as automatic take-off and landing. Many unexpected problems occurred during the envelope expansion tests which were mostly under those automatic functions. The anomalies in helicopter mode include vortex ring state (VRS), long delay in the automatic take-off, and the initial overshoot in the automatic landing. In contrast, the anomalies in conversion mode are untrimmed AOS oscillation and the calibration errors of the air data sensors. The problems of low damping in rotor speed and roll rate responses are found in airplane mode. Once all of the known problems had been solved, the vehicle in airplane mode gradually reached the maximum design speed of 440km/h at the operation altitude of 3km. This paper also presents a comprehensive detailing of the control systems of the tilt-rotor unmanned air vehicle (UAV).

• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.277-286
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• 2004

In this study, summary of past tilt-rotor concept development presented, and based on that, major pros and cons of tilt-rotor technology compared to other air-vehicle concept was presented. Also presented were major design features, considerations and sizing constraints of tilt-rotor configuration implemented to the development of Smart UAV. It is hoped that this paper be served to understand the tilt-rotor air-vehicle design and development.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.561-568
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• 2006

CFD simulation for one of tilt-rotor UAV configurations, TR-E2S1, was performed to investigate its aerodynamic characteristics. Control surfaces such as elevator and rudder were deflected and wing incidence angle was changed. Also aerodynamic stabilities were analyzed with the variation of pitch and yaw angles. The comparison of CFD with wind tunnel test results reveals the same trends in the aerodynamic characteristics and stabilities. However 12% scale wind tunnel test model is too small for accurate data collection and should build a high fidelity model for quantitative data comparison.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.389-392
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• 2011

In this study, the engine performance data was extracted and analyzed through the flight test of Smart UAV which is tilt rotor aircraft. The flight test was conducted for the transition flight regime where the tilt angle of prop-rotor varies from 90 degree to 0 degree and vice versa. The engine performance data such as engine power and specific fuel consumption gathered from flight tests were compared well with the results of engine performance analysis program.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.9-16
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• 2007

Tilt rotor aircraft can take off and land vertically and cruise faster than any other helicopter. A scaled flight demonstration model of a tilt rotor aircraft has been developed by KARI. Because the flight characteristics of tilt rotor are not well known, the developed scaled model would be helpful to evaluate flight control algorithm of a full scale aircraft. The tethered hover test has been performed in order to improve hover flight characteristics of tilt rotor aircraft prior to flight test of the small scaled model. During the tethered hover test, the performance of rotor speed governor, rate SAS (Stability Augmentation System) and control surface mixers have been evaluated. We expect that the results of real flight hover test would be quite same as tethered hover test. Therefore the tethered hover test results will reduce the risk of flight test properly by fixing some of hidden problems which might occur during the flight test. This paper presents the results of tethered hover test in detail and shows how it could be final ground test before flight test. The control mixer gain and rate SAS feedback gains were modified in order to get higher controllability and stability during the tethered hover flight. The rotor governor showed that it could keep rotor RPM constant with very small deviation even during severe pilot collective input change. The tethered hover test results gave pilot and engineers confirmation and experience about the scheduled flight test.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.1-6
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• 2008

The tilt rotor aircraft has the flight characteristics which takes off vertically like a helicopter and flies forward like an airplane. Especially, the transition process from a helicopter to an airplane mode requires not only the mixing of control inputs but also the stability and controllability augmentation system(SCAS) in order to keep the safe flight because there are compound flight dynamic characteristics of a helicopter and an airplane including non-linearity, uncertainty. This paper describes the design of SCAS in a lateral motion for the tilt rotor aircraft based on the $H_{\infty}$ control method, which was performed from mathematical model with weighting matrix based on the relationship between the $H_{\infty}$ norm and the sensitivity function. Through simulation analysis for the controller designed on the $H_{\infty}$ control theory, it was shown that this method may be applied to the control design of the tilt rotor aircraft.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.57-62
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• 2004

This paper deals with a waypoint trajectory following problem for the tilt-rotor UAV under development in Korea (TR-KUAV). In this problem, dynamic model inversion based on the linearized model and Sigma-Phi neural network with adaptive weight update are involved to realize the waypoint following algorithm for the vehicle in the helicopter flight mode (nacelle angle=0 deg). This algorithms consists of two main parts: outer-loop system as a command generator and inner-loop system as stabilizing controller. In this waypoint following problem, the position information in the inertial axis is given to the outer-loop system. From this information, Attitude Command/Attitude Hold logic in the longitudinal channel and Rate Command/Attitude Hold logic in the lateral channel are realized in the inner-loop part of the overall structure of the waypoint following algorithm. The nonlinear simulation based on the TR-KUAV is carried out to evaluate the stability and performance of the algorithm. From the numerical simulation results, the algorithm shows very good tracking performance of passing the waypoints given. Especially, it is observed that ACAH/RCAH logic in the inner-loop has the satisfactory performance due to adaptive neural network in spite of the model error coming from the linear model based inversion.