Print Email Facebook Twitter Preliminary Structural Design for a Hypersonic UAV Title Preliminary Structural Design for a Hypersonic UAV Author Terhes, C. Contributor Zandbergen, B.T.C. (mentor) Eggers, A. (mentor) Wijker, J. (mentor) Faculty Aerospace Engineering Department Space Flight Programme Space Engineering Date 2014-11-12 Abstract The design and development of a small unmanned aerial vehicle is proposed in order to provide more accurate hypersonic flight data. The outcomes could improve the current shortage of hypersonic flight data and serve to understand and predict how test conditions may be different from actual test flight. Furthermore, the response of the structure and materials due to hypersonic speed will be investigated and stability and control methods during flight will be enriched. To achieve these goals, further investigation of the current configuration of the drone needs to be addressed in order to determine if the proposed structure is feasible. The vehicle and its mission have been called Hypresearch. The Hypresearch vehicle will be launched at the initial flight conditions of Mach 6 and 42 km altitude and it will self-sustain the hypersonic flight by its own rocket engine, descent and land. Thermal-structural challenges can be quite severe on hypersonic vehicles. Aerodynamic loads (mechanical loads) and aerodynamic heating (thermal loads) can be identified for all the flight stages. Besides, since Hypresearch needs to be introduced at the designated initial flight conditions, a launch system needs be designed or selected. The liftoff phase impose extra challenges, since the aircraft will be launched on the side of a rocket booster and undergo launch loads, such as g-forces, vibration, interface loads, not presented during the straight and level flight. After the loads on the vehicle were identified and categorized, the primary and secondary structure was set up using the strength of material and elastic instability approach. The materials selected were MAX phases for the leading edge and nose section, and titanium alloy for the main body. Likewise, titanium alloy was the material preferred for the secondary structure and attachments, as it deals the best with the expected temperature gradients. The following step was the positioning of the internal structure in respect to the constraints set by the project (no-trimming conditions during level flight), and the attachments concepts between the airframe and internal units, were proposed. After the initial structural design, the finite element model for the vehicle was set up to be used for the proposed structure’s analyses. The undertaken finite element analyses consist of: static, modal, pressure distribution, random and shock effect. The results show that the vehicle’s structure is likely to withstand the selected loading environment of the launch vehicle. From this model, the final mass budget of the vehicle’s structure was obtained. It was concluded that the structure is considered feasible with regards to the liftoff loads and within the mass budget requirement of a maximum 35 kg. In a nutshell, the graduation project is focused on finding simple solutions to some structural design problems and providing an accurate analysis of the vehicle, in order to confirm the feasibility of the design under investigation. Subject structural designhypersonic vehicleFEMFEA To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:802993a5-b218-4b7f-a7b4-9cf5375f7b38 Part of collection Student theses Document type master thesis Rights (c) 2014 Terhes, C. Files PDF Msc_Thesis_CTerhes.pdf 5.52 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:802993a5-b218-4b7f-a7b4-9cf5375f7b38/datastream/OBJ/view