Aeroelastic Dynamics and Control of Micro Unmanned Air Vehicles in Formation Flight

• Grant number: 23/04325-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: May 01, 2023
• End date: April 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Mechanical Engineering - Mechanics of Solids
• Principal Investigator: Douglas Domingues Bueno
• Grantee: Renan Cavenaghi Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Engenharia (FEIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Ilha Solteira. Ilha Solteira , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 22/03128-7 - Aeroelastic analysis and control of bio-inspired UAVs for engineering applications, AP.PNGP.PI

Abstract

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in different applications has growing interest from the community, mainly due to the advantages over conventional manned systems. Among the applications, there are border monitoring, espionage and cargo transportation. However, the transport of loads by a single UAV is typically quite limited to small masses. On the other hand, the use of a formation of air vehicles, in synchronized flight, is an important alternative to overcome this limitation. Thus, this project comprises the use of bio-inspired UAVs, whose flight mechanism is inspired on the kinematics of birds flying in formation to increase the transported payload weight capability. The proposal involvies to integrate the structural dynamics the and aerodynamics to obtain an aeroelastic model from the UAVs formation. The strategy is to evaluate different formation configurations to increase the generation of lift and thrust forces. Different controllers are evaluated to verify the controllability from the formation during the flight. Also, the dynamics from the transported payload is considered to improve the controller robustness. Theoretical results are compared with experimental results obtained from wind tunnel and flight tests.