Optimization Method For Conceptual Design Of Flying Wing UAV Family

The flying-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)has obvious superiority in aerodynamic efficiency and stealth performance.With the progress of technology,UAV with multi-mission capability has become a research hotspot.However,it is usually difficult for a single aircraft to meet the requirements of multi-missions simultaneously and optimally due to the different mission profiles of UAVs.The strategy of family design provides a solution to realize multi-mission capability.This thesis presents a concept scheme of flying-wing UAV family,including two sub-aircraft for combat and reconnaissance missions.The UAV family shares a common fuselage and considers the wings as specific modules.The purpose of the thesis is to provide an effective method and tool for the comprehensive analysis and optimization of the primary parameters of flying-wing UAV family.The main contents include:1)According to the characteristics of the flying-wing UAV family,the customized method of parametric design was proposed.Secondary development technology with CATIA was taken to establish 3D geometry of each sub-aircraft with or without control surface deflections.The aerodynamic analysis method combines the rapid numerical method(full potential equation and panel method)with the engineering formula,and it was used to calculate the aerodynamic characteristics of the clean and trimmed configuration under the take-off and cruising condition of each sub-aircraft.2)The propulsion system module,weight analysis module and performance analysis module appropriate for UAV family were established using the existing theoretical methods and tools.All disciplinary models were integrated,and a comprehensive multidisciplinary analysis model for conceptual design of the UAV family was created.3)The optimization method of UAV family was studied.The optimization problems of both single UAV and UAV family were formulated.The two-level optimization strategy was adopted to design a primary parameter for UAV family,which was realized on the iSIGHT platform.With consideration of the constraint of the common fuselage,the tradeoff between the fuselage weight and performances was studied by analyzing the optimization results.The research results show that this method can effectively optimize the overall parameters of flying-wing UAV family and the optimal results are reasonable.