Aerodynamic and mechanical design of micro class UAV for aerodesign international competition

Aero Design is an annual student competition held by Society of Automotive Engineers in which the goal is to design and build a flying UAV capable of lifting the highest payload while observing lowest payload weight and fitting in a specified carrying case. The most important aspect in aircraft design is choosing suitable aerodynamic and mechanical configurations for example: aircraft and wing layout, airfoil with the correct Reynolds (in this case low) number, airframe, and landing gear construction. The article presents airfoil selection, trade studies, tail aerodynamic design, tail sizing, drag analysis, calculations of stability, stress analysis, propulsion selection and manufacturing of UAV prototype. In particular, the comparison of different aircraft designs, effect of taper ratio on lift distribution, the design of wings, lift vs. angle of attack curves and. angle of attack curves, the aircraft tail surfaces, fuselage design are presented in the article. The aim of this study was to perform analysis of aerodynamic and mechanical of Micro Class UAV for Aerodesign International Competition. All projects will be doing in a prototype technology demonstrator was built to confirm our assumptions about airfoil's performance. Flight tests were successful. Analytical model was made and put into an excel spreadsheet. Maximum predicted payload was estimated to be 5.5 pounds.