Conceptual structural design of an automated low altitude air delivery unmanned aerial vehicle

Kurzfassung

This work presents the conceptual structural design of the unmanned aerial vehicle concepts within the Automated Low Altitude Air Delivery (ALAADy) project of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Three aerial vehicle concepts of a Gyroplane, a Fixed High-Wing with a Twin Boom V-Tail Aircraft and a Boxed-Wing Aircraft are treated in this work. Each of these aircraft concepts has its individual structure topology design for the same mission requirement. The main focus of this work is on the conceptual loads analysis and the conceptual structural design of each vehicle. The design and analysis of the structure is performed with the parametric finite element model generation and design process, MONA, of the Institute of Aeroelasticity of the DLR. The major result of the work is the estimation of the structural mass of each configuration and the comparison of the mass between these concepts. The mass comparison result is one of the major criteria among others such as the aircraft flight maneuverability that are used for the global evaluation of the aircraft concepts in the ALAADy project.