DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF AN UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE

The teamwork is composed by students with the help and advice of professors from the faculty of aeronautical engineering from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB) at Medellin, Colombia. This project is called Guayacan which was developed thanks to the great effort of the whole team over several months of constant dedication.   The design and development of this kind of technology could bring several benefits for different industries around the world, for instance in cargo transport application, this kind of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) could provide a better, cheaper and easier alternative to operate than the actual manned cargo aviation. In countries such as Colombia there are great potentials to exploit the market possibilities, where this technology could be a mean to drive improving entrepreneurships which could become in big companies’ contributors to the country's economy.   This model is the result of a large process which involved many design aspects where the teamwork selected the best model from five initial proposals to solve three missions issued by 2020 Design Build Fly (DBF) contest proposed by American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AAIA), where the missions consisted in:

• To design a new aircraft model remotely piloted that can take off in a runway of 20 ft
• The aircraft model could be able to carry 12 kg of payload.
• The model should have a system to deploy a banner to accomplish publicity missions.

The three missions before were accomplish successfully obtaining not only these objectives but improving modeling CAD, optimization, parametrization, aerodynamic, propulsion, structural and manufacture techniques.   Interesting aspects  

• CAD construction using software CATIA V5 Student Edition taking in account formula tool and tables from Excel which allowed possible changes in dimensional parameters with easier process than normal procedures to change dimensions for instance inside an “Sketch” related to a “Multi-Section” operation. Additionally, it was necessary the programming of tables in excel to import coordinate curves belonging to aerodynamic airfoils.
• High quality standards in the construction of model with the implementation of composite materials in the main aircraft structure to support all the involved static and dynamic efforts ensuring the quality and safety of the flight. For the manufacturing process was so important the low cost of the materials and procedures without ignoring the high quality of these.
• The aircraft is environmentally friendly due to use of electrical engine emitting zero polluting gases as the aircrafts driven by reciprocating engines does.
• High aerodynamic efficiency of the aircraft due to soft surfaces along the fuselage and the tandem configuration which not only increase the lift-off force, but it also reduces the required space to store the aircraft.