Manufacturing and structural analysis of a lightweight sandwich composite UAV wing

Download

index.pdf

Date

2007

Author

Turgut, Tahir

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

1009
views

1742
downloads

This thesis work deals with manufacturing a lightweight composite unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) wing, material characterization of the composites used in the UAV wing, and preliminary structural analysis of the UAV wing. Manufacturing is performed at the composite laboratory founded in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, and with hand lay-up and vacuum bagging method at room temperature the wing is produced. This study encloses the detailed manufacturing process of the UAV wing from the mold manufacturing up to the final wing configuration supported with sketches and pictures. Structural analysis of the composite wing performed in this study is based on the material properties determined by coupon tests and micromechanics approaches. Contrary to the metallic materials, the actual material properties of composites are generally not available in the material handbooks, because the elastic properties of composite materials are dependent on the manufacturing process. In this study, the mechanical properties, i.e. Young’s Modulus, are determined utilizing three different methods. Firstly, longitudinal tensile testing of the coupon specimens is performed to obtain the elastic properties. Secondly, mechanics of materials approach is used to determine the elastic properties. Additionally, an approximate method, that can be used in a preliminary study, is employed. The elastic properties determined by the tests and other approaches are compared to each other. One of the aims of this study is to establish an equivalent material model based on test and micromechanics approach, and use the equivalent model in the structural analysis by finite element method. To achieve this, composite structure of the wing is modeled in detail with full composite material descriptions of the surfaces of the wing structure, and comparisons are made with the results obtained by utilizing equivalent elastic constants. The analyses revealed that all three approaches have consistent, and close results; especially in terms of deflections and natural frequencies. Stress values obtained are also comparable as well. For a case study on level flight conditions, spanwise wing loading distribution is obtained using a program of ESDU, and the wing is analyzed with the distributed loading. Reasonable results are obtained, and the results compared with the tip loading case. Another issue dealt in this study is analyzing the front spar of the wing separately. The analysis of the front spar is performed using transformed section method and finite element analysis. In the results, it is found that both methods calculates the deflections very close to each other. Close stress results are found when solid elements are used in the finite element analysis, whereas, the results were deviating when shell elements are used in the analysis.

Subject Keywords

Structural Engineering

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12608774/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/17130

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Design and analysis of a mode-switching micro unmanned aerial vehicle Cakici, Ferit; Leblebicioğlu, Mehmet Kemal (SAGE Publications, 2016-12-01) In this study, design and analysis of a mode-switching vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with level flight capability is considered. The design of the platform includes both multirotor and fixed-wing (FW) conventional airplane structures; therefore named as VTOL-FW. The aircraft is modeled using aerodynamical principles including post-stall conditions. Trim conditions are obtained by solving constrained optimization problems. Linear analysis techniques are utilized for trim ...
COMPARATIVE STRUCTURAL OPTIMIZATION STUDY OF COMPOSITE AND ALUMINUM HORIZONTAL TAIL PLANE OF A HELICOPTER Arpacıoğlu, Bertan; Kayran, Altan (2019-11-11) This work presents structural optimization studies of aluminum and composite material horizontal tail plane of a helicopter by using MSC. NASTRAN SOL200 optimization capabilities. Structural design process starts from conceptual design phase, and structural layout design is performed by using CATIA. In the preliminary design phase, study focuses on the minimum weight optimization with multiple design variables and similar constraints for both materials. Aerodynamic load calculation is performed using ANSYS ...
Structural optimization of composite and aluminum horizontal tail plane of a helicopter Arpacıoğlu, Bertan; Kayran, Altan; Department of Aerospace Engineering (2019) This thesis presents structural optimization studies of aluminum and composite material horizontal tail plane structure of a helicopter by using MSC.NASTRAN optimization capabilities. Structural design process starts from conceptual design phase, and structural layout design is performed by using CATIA. In the preliminary design phase, study focuses on minimum weight optimization with multiple design variables and similar constraints for both materials. Aerodynamic load calculation is performed using ANSYS ...
3D-FE model field-calibration and rating studies on existing r/c buildings Demirok, Emel; Türer, Ahmet; Department of Civil Engineering (2006) Dynamic instrumentation and a series of ambient vibration tests were performed on a four storey strengthened R/C building within the scope of this study. Traffic load and wind load were accepted as natural dynamic loads and the vibrations were recorded by sensitive accelerometers.For that study, 12 uniaxial, 1 triaxial accelerometers and a 15 channel data logger system were used. Four sets of dynamic measurements were recorded over a period of 6 months. Recorded readings were analyzed using UPC, PC and CVA ...
Design and analysis of a VTOL Tilt-Wing UAV Çakır, Hasan; Kurtuluş, Dilek Funda; Department of Aerospace Engineering (2020) In this study, the design and analysis of a UAV, which is capable of vertical take-off and landing using fixed six rotors placed on the tilt-wing and tilt-tail, will be explained. The aircraft has four rotors on its wing and two rotors on its tail. The main wing and horizontal tail are capable of 90° tilting. Both aerodynamic and thrust forces are used during VTOL, transition, and forward flight. Aerodynamic analysis has been performed in ANSYS Fluent v.18. A non-linear six DoF model, involving a 3D CAD mod...

Citation Formats

T. Turgut, “Manufacturing and structural analysis of a lightweight sandwich composite UAV wing,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2007.