Название: Unmanned Aircraft Design: A Review of Fundamentals, 2nd Edition
Автор: Mohammad H. Sadraey
Издательство: Springer
Год: 2025
Страниц: 230
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true), epub
Размер: 41.1 MB

This book provides fundamental principles, design procedures, and design tools for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with three sections focusing on vehicle design, autopilot design, and ground system design. The design of manned aircraft and the design of UAVs have some similarities and some differences. They include the design process, constraints (e.g., g-load, pressurization), and UAV main components (autopilot, ground station, communications system, sensors, and payload). A UAV designer must be aware of the latest UAV developments; current technologies; know lessons learned from past failures; and they should appreciate the breadth of UAV design options.

The contribution of unmanned aircraft continues to expand every day and over 67 countries are developing and employing UAVs for both military and civil/scientific purposes. A UAV system is much more than a reusable air vehicle or vehicles. UAVs are air vehicles, they fly like airplanes and operate in an airplane environment. They are designed like air vehicles; they have to meet critical air vehicle requirements. A designer needs to know how to integrate complex, multi-disciplinary systems, and to understand the environment, the requirements and the design challenges and this book is an excellent overview of the fundamentals from an engineering perspective.

Research in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has grown in interest over the past couple decades. There has been tremendous emphasis in unmanned aerial vehicles, both of fixed and rotary wing types over the past decades. Historically, UAVs were designed to maximize endurance and range, but demands for UAV designs have changed in recent years. Applications span both civilian and military domains, the latter being the more important at this stage. Early statements about performance, operation cost, and man- ufacturability are highly desirable already early during the design process. Individual technical requirements have been satisfied in various prototype, demonstrator and initial production programs like Reaper, Global Hawk and other international programs. The possible break-through of UAV technology requires support from the aforementioned awareness of general UAV design requirements and their consequences on cost, operation and performance of UAV systems.