Purpose

Increasing endurance was a very appropriate subject for the biomimetic approach. The study aims to design and manufacture a long-lasting mini unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) using active gliding and soaring.

Design/methodology/approach

The endurance of mini UAVs is limited by battery or fuel capacity, and it is not always possible to increase these energy sources due to the fuselage size. Long endurance aircraft are required in various areas such as silent environment and traffic monitoring or search and rescue. Literature research on bird flight performance conducted to determine design parameters. These parameters are used in the theoretical design of the UAV for optimization. Computational fluid dynamics simulation and flight tests of the UAV performed to figure out the success of the design.

Findings

For a mini UAV to be produced in this class, it has been observed that it is more accurate to examine birds instead of gliders due to the size similarity. The UAV design reaches a 27.5 L/D (Glide ratio) ratio in the theoretical approach. However, flight results approved max L/D ratio is around 25 at the sea level. This flight performance is enough to outperform in glide ratio of Wandering albatrosses.

Practical implications

Sailplanes are known as sport aircraft. However, recent projects focus on glider designs due to fuel efficiency and silent tracking. Stemme S-14 that carries a high-resolution camera is one of the examples of these projects. The unmanned glider design can lead to these implications in the UAVs at least during the stand-by period in the air. Thanks to low weight, UAVs do not require strong thermals, which allows flying almost all over the world.

Originality/value

Researchers generally focus on increasing the battery capacity or the performance of the UAV. However, this study’s concentration is to increase the flight duration of the UAV by using geographical currents. For this purpose, taking advantage of bird morphology is quite a new topic. Also, glider type designs are rarely found in the field.

中文翻译：

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设计和生产受鸟类启发的无人滑翔机

目的

提高耐力是仿生方法的一个非常合适的主题。该研究旨在设计和制造一种使用主动滑翔和翱翔的长效微型无人机（UAV）。

设计/方法/方法

迷你无人机的续航能力受到电池或燃料容量的限制，而且由于机身尺寸的原因，并不总是可以增加这些能源。在安静环境和交通监控或搜救等各个领域都需要长航时飞机。进行鸟类飞行性能的文献研究以确定设计参数。这些参数用于无人机的理论设计进行优化。对无人机进行了计算流体动力学模拟和飞行测试，以确定设计是否成功。

发现

对于将要在此类中生产的微型无人机，已经观察到由于尺寸相似，检查鸟类而不是滑翔机更准确。无人机设计在理论方法中达到了 27.5 L/D（滑翔比）比。然而，飞行结果批准的最大 L/D 比在海平面约为 25。这种飞行性能足以胜过流浪信天翁的滑翔比。

实际影响

滑翔机被称为运动飞机。然而，由于燃油效率和静音跟踪，最近的项目专注于滑翔机设计。搭载高分辨率相机的 Stemme S-14 就是这些项目的例子之一。无人驾驶滑翔机的设计至少在空中待机期间会对无人机产生这些影响。由于重量轻，无人机不需要强大的热量，几乎可以在世界各地飞行。

原创性/价值

研究人员通常专注于增加电池容量或无人机的性能。然而，本研究的重点是利用地理洋流来增加无人机的飞行时间。为此，利用鸟类形态是一个相当新的话题。此外，滑翔机类型的设计在该领域很少见。