Is a small UAV with extended altitude capabilities feasible?
At the moment there are no relatively small unmanned aircraft for flights above 15000 ft, due to the lack of an appropriate propulsion system. If a reasonable thermal efficiency can be attained, small turboprop engines could enable filling this gap. The current paper investigates the feasibility of extending the altitude capabilities of small unmanned aircraft. It is shown that it is possible to obtain a reasonable endurance for takeoff weights around 12 to 16 kg with a payload of 2.5 kg. Doubling the payload weight leads to a sharp increase in takeoff weight but all in all still results in a fairly small unmanned aerial vehicle.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Turboprop Engine high altitude
Dries Verstraete Peter Gibbens KC Wong
School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, The University of Sydney,Aeronautical Engineering Building J11, Sydney, NSW, 2006,Australia
国际会议
2011年亚太航空航天技术学术会议(APISAT 2011)
澳大利亚
英文
1-10
2011-02-28（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）