Configurational Aspects and Vehicle Specific Investigations for Future Unmanned Cargo Aircraft

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the work done to examine in more detail how three con-figurations, namely double tail boom fixed wing aircraft, box wing aircraft and gyrocopter as proposed in a pre-study (Hasan & Sachs, 2021) are suited for the task described in the project Automated Low Altitude Air Delivery (ALAADy). It is investigated which specific properties and features of each configuration are ra-ther contributing or contravening for the ALAADy purpose. These investigations comprise, above all, the conduction of wind tunnel tests and a flight experiment. In order to identify and investigate inherent safety features 6-degree-of-freedom flight dynamic simulations of the three configurations are set up. To provide suf-ficiently precise simulation models many details of the configurations and the ac-cording power train variations are created and examined. For the gyrocopter wind tunnel tests of a scaled gyrocopter demonstrator are conducted as well.