Project Details

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Yawing Flexible Drone Experiment

Company: Mechatronics Research Lab

Major(s):
Primary: ME
Secondary: EE
Optional: ESC

Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO

Intellectual Property: NO

Motivation: Rotorcraft including helicopters, tiltrotor, and rotary-wing aircraft use hovering and forward flight for search-and-rescue, surveillance, observation, and transportation. However, eVTOL aircraft have lightweight and flexible rotor blades and wings that are prone to vibration from rotor excitation, separated flow behind the rotor hub, vehicle maneuvers, and wind gusts. Description: This project involves the design and fabrication of a bench scale test stand for the study of rigid body rotation and vibration in eVTOL aircraft with flexible beams/booms/wings. The test stand will be used to study the feedback control of gyro sensors to the rotor brushless DC motors to control rigid body rotation (yaw) and beam vibration. Objective: The capstone deliverable includes the design and fabrication of all the mechanical fixtures, hub, safety stops, wing structure, and mounts for the yawing flexible drone simulator. The two proprotors rotate in opposite directions with flipped rotor blades both providing vertical thrust. Differential spinning of the two rotors causes the beam to rotate (yaw). In quadrotors, for example, thrust is commonly used for roll and pitch attitude control while the differential torque is used for yaw control. Mechanical fixtures should be designed to fix the beam onto the ground (vibration table), allowing the beam to rotate freely within the two safety stops. The hub and safety stops are mounted to a steel pegboard vibration isolation table which has threaded holes. For safety reasons, two safety stops are installed so that yaw motion is not able to spin uncontrollably. A capability to stop/lock the hub allows flexibility and safety in experiments. For the wing structure, students should minimize boom weight and optimize cross section of beam while providing sufficient support for the vertical thrust without twisting or bending instabilities. The delivered device should provide mounting points for the three sensors used to control vibrations and yawing motion: 1. Two gyro sensors are installed at each end that measure angular rate at each beam tip. 2. Encoder at hub (in the middle of beam) measures yaw angle.