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The rapid development of bespoke small unmanned aircraft

A Proposed Design Loop

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2017

C. A. Paulson ,
A. Sóbester  and
J. P. Scanlan
C. A. Paulson*
Affiliation:
University of Southampton, Computational Engineering and Design, Southampton, United Kingdom
A. Sóbester
Affiliation:
University of Southampton, Computational Engineering and Design, Southampton, United Kingdom
J. P. Scanlan
Affiliation:
University of Southampton, Computational Engineering and Design, Southampton, United Kingdom
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

The ability to quickly fabricate small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) through Additive Manufacturing (AM) methods opens a range of new possibilities for the design and optimisation of these vehicles. In this paper, we propose a design loop that makes use of surrogate modelling and AM to reduce the design and optimisation time of scientific sUAS. AM reduces the time and effort required to fabricate a complete aircraft, allowing for rapid design iterations and flight testing. Co-Kriging surrogate models allow data collected from test flights to correct Kriging models trained with numerically simulated data. The resulting model provides physically accurate and computationally cheap aircraft performance predictions. A global optimiser is used to search this model to find an optimal design for a bespoke aircraft. This paper presents the design loop and a case study which demonstrates its application.

Keywords

additive manufacturingdesign optimisationgeometry parameterisationsurrogate modellingUAS
Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 121 , Issue 1245 , November 2017 , pp. 1683 - 1710
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 2017 

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