The T-wing tail-sitter unmanned air vehicle: From design concept to research flight vehicle

Abstract

This paper considers the key aspects of the development of the T-Wing tail-sitter unmanned air vehicle (UAV), starting from a novel concept through to the current flight test vehicle. The T-Wing is a twin-engine UAV that relies on propeller wash over its elevons and rudders for control during low-speed vertical flight but performs the majority of its mission in wing-borne horizontal flight. The foundation for the successful development of the T-Wing to date is the integrated aerodynamic and propulsion analysis of the wing-propeller interaction. This is critical for the vehicle' vertical flight controllability and feeds directly into other key areas of the overall development process, including the use of multi-disciplinary optimization for preliminary vehicle design and the development of an extensive six-degree-of-freedom non-linear simulation of the vehicle to aid in control system design. This paper also presents some of the testing that has been used to support the analysis. This has allowed the T-Wing to progress from a paper concept to a flying research UAV.

Robust attitude control for tail‐sitter unmanned aerial vehicles in flight mode transitions

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] The fixed-wing UAVs possess desired properties including high cruise efficiency, long flight time, and high flight speed, but it is difficult for these vehicles to implement hovering missions or low speed maneuvers 11 ; however, the rotorcrafts have attributes of takeoff and landing vertically as well as hovering, but they have limitations on the flight speed and cruise efficiency. [12][13][14][15] As depicted in the works of Stone 16 and Saeed et al, 17 a newly developed configuration for UAVs is the tail-sitter aerial vehicle. They possess great flexibility and can vertically take off and land as rotary-wing aircraft while cruise with high flight speed and endurance as fixed-wing aircraft.…”

Preliminary Design of a Small Unmanned Battery Powered Tailsitter

“…The T-wing configuration with a canard and dual propellers was investigated by multidisciplinary optimization based on detailed subsystems, including aerodynamics-propulsion integrated model, weight and structure model, and control model. Such method was efficient for the design of battery powered tailsitter with different missions and constraints when there was little statistical guidance [11]. However, too many parameters and constraints, at least 13 equality constraints, 36 actual design variables, and 75 fixed design parameters, should be taken into consideration.…”

UAV Flight Path Control Using Contraction-Based Back-stepping Control

“…In recent years, missions performed by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has increasingly emphasized on high agility and maneuverability. An example is the tailsitter UAV [1,2] which performs maneuver that covers a large pitch angle. These maneuvers typically require the UAVs to operate outside their linear operating regime, and results in nonlinear flight dynamics characteristics.…”