Abstract:
In recent years the Medium Altitude Long Range Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MALE UAVs)
have found a lot of applications in both commercial and military sectors. One of the most
cumbersome task in the design of a MALE UAV is to achieve the maximum possible endurance
while satisfying all the design constraints and selecting the best possible airframe parameters. The
objective of this thesis is to tackle the endurance problem of a MALE UAV being considered as
an optimization problem to get the maximum possible endurance under the given design
constraints. Accelerated particle swarm optimization (APSO) technique is used to find out the
optimal design parameters for the MALE UAV. The design constraints that are being considered
under the requirement of MALE UAVs are airframe geometry, its dimensions, and UAV mass.
These constraints are represented in terms of wingspan and mean aerodynamic chord. Optimal
design parameters are obtained using APSO. The design geometry for the optimal parameters has
been modeled and analyzed using XFLR5. Finally using the propulsion system and the efficiencies
of all the components the expected endurance time for the MALE UAV comes out to be 5.18 hrs.
