Hybrid VTOL UAV

Texas A&M University Senior Capstone

Overview

Over the course of the Fall and Spring semesters of Devin's undergraduate senior year at Texas A&M University, his senior capstone project team designed, manufactured, and flight tested a long-range hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned air vehicle (UAV) from the ground up. This aircraft combines the versatility of electric quad-rotors with the efficiency and range of fixed-wing flight and an internal combustion engine. Additionally, they developed a system for in-flight battery recharging utilizing energy generated by the IC engine.

Overall, this 10-pound aircraft, named the Long-Range Hybrid-Electric VTOL-Integrated Aircraft, or LHVIA, has the capability to deliver a small payload over 100 miles autonomously, with a nominal cruise speed of 60 mph.

The team successfully flight tested their aircraft on April 23rd, 2024. They went on to win 1st in large capstone teams at the 2024 Texas A&M University Engineering Project Showcase.

YouTube Link

Technical Work

Devin's personal responsibilities involved designing the aerodynamic properties and stability characteristics of the aircraft through vortex panel methods (XFLR5) and CFD analysis (Star-CCM+). This additionally included design of the fuselage, empennage (horizontal and vertical stabilizers), wing, and control surfaces with CAD software (SOLIDWORKS).

The design of the wing is inspired by gliders and uses a common glider airfoil and high aspect-ratio wing. These characteristics together provide a high lift-to-drag ratio for a small aircraft optimized purely for cruise flight. Since this aircraft is a VTOL aircraft, there is no need to compromise for lift-off performance in the wing. Additionally, the stability of the aircraft was modeled to mimic a Cessna-172 as it is a common stable aircraft.

Devin also worked on the design, manufacturing, and testing of a modular wind tunnel model. This model was used to validate the CFD analysis and to obtain drag characteristics for components of the aircraft which were too complicated to model in CFD with the team's current resources and skill level.

This modular wind tunnel model allowed the team to perform all the testing they needed with one model, incrementally adding components with each test, so that they could obtain individual drag characteristics for each component we sequentially added to the model. This also saved costs on filament for 3D-printing.