Design of unmanned air vehicle (UAV) for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL)

In recent years, Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft have gained significant attention due to their versatility and capability to operate in constrained spaces. This thesis focuses on the comprehensive design and analysis of a VTOL aircraft with tilt wing technology and its propeller system. A comparative evaluation of various existing VTOL designs from the literature has been conducted to propose a novel aircraft design. Each component of the aircraft and the selected materials were carefully optimized for efficiency and performance. The worm drive mechanism was chosen for the tilt mechanism, enabling the VTOL feature. Different types of propellers were employed on the wings and at the rear of the aircraft to achieve the required thrust during vertical take-off and landing and to maintain moment balance. In the preliminary design, a total of six propellers are chosen, with two 3-bladed propellers at the rear and four 2-bladed propellers on the wings. Then, the performance of the propellers on the wing under various conditions was evaluated by performing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analyses and optimum configurations were determined for different number of propellers scenarios.