Open AccessMathematical Modeling and Designing a Heavy Hybrid-Electric Quadcopter, Controlled by Flaps
Author(s) -
Mohammad Sadeq Ale Isaac,
Ahmed Refaat Ragab,
Enrique Caballero Garcés,
Marco A. Luna,
Pablo Flores Peña,
Pascual Campoy Cervera
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
unmanned systems/unmanned systems.
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.448
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 2301-3869
pISSN - 2301-3850
DOI - 10.1142/s2301385022500133
Subject(s) - quadcopter , drone , matlab , lift (data mining) , aerodynamics , computer science , automotive engineering , controller (irrigation) , attitude control , control engineering , engineering , aeronautics , simulation , aerospace engineering , agronomy , genetics , data mining , biology , operating system
Systematic hybrid-electric unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and, especially, quadcopters are so promising due to their long flight endurance and their usage in patrol and rescue missions which gain a high interest to be under examination and test scope by researchers; however, a complete mathematical design is required to fulfill theoretical complexities such as aerodynamic analysis and flight dynamics models related. This paper investigates salient sections from hypothesis to implementation. Researchers at Drone Hopper company have conducted various calculations to perform a precise novel platform called Duty-Hopper (DH). The benefit of this design is to control the attitude by flap vanes and electrical ducted fans (EDFs) when using gasoline engines; while, the principle propellers only lift the drone. This paper examines the attitude control system of DH, once using only flaps, then by only EDFs, and eventually, by compounding both. During this research, the scientific software used is ANSYS-Fluent and MATLAB-SimScape to analyze the entire body of the DH. Furthermore, a robust fault-tolerant controller is designed to immune the DH against internal and external errors. Our research reveals that using flaps is a feasible way to control attitude when it is augmented by EDFs.