Mathematical Modeling and Designing a Heavy Hybrid-Electric Quadcopter, Controlled by Flaps

Abstract

Systematic hybrid-electric unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and, especially, quadcopters are so promising due to their long flight endurance and their usage in patrol and rescue missions which gain a high interest to be under examination and test scope by researchers; however, a complete mathematical design is required to fulfill theoretical complexities such as aerodynamic analysis and flight dynamics models related. This paper investigates salient sections from hypothesis to implementation. Researchers at Drone Hopper company have conducted various calculations to perform a precise novel platform called Duty-Hopper (DH). The benefit of this design is to control the attitude by flap vanes and electrical ducted fans (EDFs) when using gasoline engines; while, the principle propellers only lift the drone. This paper examines the attitude control system of DH, once using only flaps, then by only EDFs, and eventually, by compounding both. During this research, the scientific software used is ANSYS-Fluent and MATLAB-SimScape to analyze the entire body of the DH. Furthermore, a robust fault-tolerant controller is designed to immune the DH against internal and external errors. Our research reveals that using flaps is a feasible way to control attitude when it is augmented by EDFs.

A Proposed System for Multi-UAVs in Remote Sensing Operations

“…Once the decision-making system defines the waypoints, the reference values of the controller are desired, which are the position and heading angles. Secondly, the attitude desired values are generated, and finally, the motor mixing part interprets the commands for the motors (see [ 22 , 23 , 24 ]).…”

“…Solving for the Laplacian transformation for a time-varying output model, as mentioned in [ 6 , 7 ], gives: where L and are the Laplacian transformation and transform inverse, respectively; the term is a standard remarking for Laplacian transformation matrix; and is the Laplacian form of , in which both and a are positive constants equal to or bigger than the transformation matrix power. Following the solution performed in previous works [ 22 , 23 , 24 ], controller update parameters that update the system’s error ( ) matrix could be defined as . Therefore, the state space formulas can be written as follows: …”

Thrust Vectoring Control for Heavy UAVs, Employing a Redundant Communication System

“…Nowadays, electrical UAVs mostly work accurately and have been improved a dozen times; however, they suffer from low flight endurance, and if electrical motors are substituted by thermal engines, the controller surfaces would be changed due to the limits of thermal systems. The authors have previously discussed the limitations and solutions proposed in [ 11 , 12 ]. In this paper, a novel approach is put forth that, despite its rarity in the history of aeronautics, if constructed properly, may stabilize an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for a long period, even in the presence of wind disturbances.…”

“…In this paper, a novel approach is put forth that, despite its rarity in the history of aeronautics, if constructed properly, may stabilize an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for a long period, even in the presence of wind disturbances. More literature reviews could be found in authors’ previous works [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. Briefly, the control strategy presented in this paper—thrust vectoring using flap vanes—offers various advantages over other strategies, including simplicity of servo installation and reduction in the mechanical complexities compared to those of collective pitch propellers because they have fewer movable components; more dynamic stability in attitude control, rather than rotatable hinges or ducts; more efficiency in lift generation based on flap design, as opposed to collective pitch props, which also offer faster response times, and when adjusting the flow direction and magnitude, allows for rapid changes in thrust vectoring, which can be advantageous for applications requiring agile flight control [ 17 ]; and finally, properly designed flap vanes can contribute to noise reduction.…”