Conceptual Design of a Highly-Maneuverable Transitional VTOL UAV with New Maneuver and Control Capabilities

Transitional Vertical take-off and landing UAVs (TVU) have recently gained significant interest as they combine the advantages of both Fixed-Wing (FW) and Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) UAVs. Despite the maturity in the field of design for conventional (VTOL and FW) UAVs, the design philosophy of TVU is in its infancy and considerable design work, techniques, and methodologies need to be developed. This paper aims to contribute to this area by presenting a complete conceptual design and analysis process for a tiltrotor TVU. The targeted tiltrotor TVU is intended to be a highly-maneuverable transitional UAV and capable of performing maneuvers not possible by traditional aircraft like pitch-hover and transitioning from hovering to FW flight mode at any attitude. The designed tiltrotor TVU aims to use its rotors thrust to control, trim, and propel the UAV in all flight modes (i.e., FW, hovering, and transition), eliminating the need for the conventional control surfaces and reducing the aircraft deadweight, which is defined herein as the weight of the systems required to fly the aircraft in one flight mode but not in another. The proposed design process starts by developing the mission profile and the design requirements. Afterwards, selection of the TVU configuration and sizing calculations for the propulsion, wing, rotors, and weight are performed. Then, the design of the TVU main components is presented. Finally, the TVU design is verified by analyzing the UAV performance and comparing the results with the desired requirements.