Multidisciplinary design optimization of a joined wing UAV

Abstract

Joined wing configuration has been attained the spotlight for the future aircraft, the high altitude long endur-ance unmanned aerial vehicle (HALE UAV), et cetera. This is because numerous researches have suggested that the joined wing configuration contains positive characteristics on aerodynamics, structures, and stability. Most of these researches have focused on analyzing given joined wing configuration’s performances in each field of study.In this paper, we have focused on designing the optimum joined wing configuration. Since the joined wing configuration is the concept based on the prodigious ability on structure performance, we have focused on the aerodynamics and stability when designing the joined wing configuration. The purpose of this research is to cal-culate and produce the optimum joined wing configuration based on the multi-objective optimization method.Through this research, we have developed, implemented, and validated the ‘aero-stability optimization framework’. This framework includes aerodynamics, stability, and mathematical optimization method. For the aerodynamics, the vortex lattice method, which calculates aerodynamic performances within short time, was used, because the optimization framework requires numerous calculations. For the stability, the flying quality evaluation is applied in order to measure the dynamic stability and express the measurement in numerical value. For the optimization method, multi-objective genetic algorithms are utilized since the purpose of the framework is to find the optimum joined wing configuration in terms of aerodynamics and stability.With the aero-stability optimization framework, the optimum joined wing configuration is produced. To check the increment of the multidisciplinary performances of the optimum joined wing, we set baseline joined wing configuration which was designed by traditional way of constructing aircraft, the trial and error technique. This baseline joined wing configuration was desig...