Structural and Dynamic Analysis of a Quadcopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are pilotless vehicles used in many applications such as rescue and military operations. A Quadcopter is a special type of UAV with vertical take-off and landing capability. A Quadcopter is having four rotors to generate the required thrust force for its flight. Nowadays, Quadcopters are being used for various applications due to its simple structure and low cost. Some interesting applications of Quadcopters include surveillance, transportation, photography, agriculture and many more. Due to increasing applications of Quadcopters, they attracted many researchers to devote their research in the field of Quadcopter Analysis. newlineA Quadcopter is an under-actuated system, which makes its flight control difficult. In addition, the Quadcopter dynamics is nonlinear. Hence, it becomes necessary to design some good control strategies for the Quadcopter s flight. Furthermore, structural design of the Quadcopter plays vital role in improving the flight performance. Hence, it is important to design the Quadcopter s frame and propeller in order to ensure the structural strength of the Quadcopter for the given specific working condition. Therefore, this thesis work deals with the complete analysis of a Quadcopter including structural and dynamic Analysis. newlineIn this work, CAD models of the Quadcopter s frame and propellers have been developed for the mass properties estimation. The developed Quadcopter models (frame and propeller) have been analyzed structurally based on finite element analysis (FEA) in order to select the best design and material among the developed models. The Quadcopter s frame has been analyzed for three different materials (aluminium alloy, CFRP, and copper alloy), which are compared based on the vibrational frequency analysis (modal analysis).The selected CFRP material for frame has further been analyzed for its structural strength using static structural analysis. The estimated results conclude that the design is safe under applied loading conditions. The analysis procedure and