78 While the words ‘drone’ and ‘UAV’ still conjure up images of toy multirotors in the mind of the average person on the street, those within our industry know that uncrewed aircraft have evolved and diversified into vehicle configurations far beyond that. Some of the new breeds of UAV are still as small as photography drones; others are as big or bigger than business jets and heavy road vehicles. But, all of them share a similar advantage over crewed aircraft in that there is no need for a pilot’s cockpit or passenger cabin, so UAV developers can experiment with different internal space allocations, weight distributions and outer aerodynamic profiles to maximise efficiency and value. Thus, autonomy has unleashed the full creativity of aircraft designers and engineers, and produced a vast range of UAV configurations that may seem quite shocking to those who know nothing beyond the simple quadcopter. In this feature, we will investigate some of these configurations, and uncover the benefits that their novel structures and layouts may yield to interested customers. Air freight We last featured US-based Natilus just over five years ago (Issue 23), showcasing its concept for a blended-wing UAV with a 1 t payload capacity. Since then, the Californian company has spoken with prospective aerial freight customers who asked whether the aircraft could be redesigned to carry standard aircraft pallets and containers within its cargo bay. “To fit those containers we had to grow the configuration, so the aircraft has quadrupled in size and now has a 4 t payload capacity for carrying 12 standard LD3 [4.5 m3] pallets, and to lift all of that we moved from a single turboprop to a dual-turboprop configuration,” says Aleksey Matyushev, CEO of Natilus. “Since those high-level changes, we’ve done at least 10,000 hours of CFD analysis, including wind-tunnel tests, here in San Diego, where we have access to a world-class one. Through amassing good data, we adopted new ideas in the wings, tails, everything to make something that will work aerodynamically, not just from a controllability standpoint but from performance too.” While one pictures a C-130 or similar as the ideal freight aircraft, they are designed for prioritising volume rather than weight, and keeping onboard crews comfortable during banking and disembarking. Matyushev estimates that the blended-wing body enables twice as much payload relative to the size of the UAV than in a conventional, comparablesized tube and wings design. Rory Jackson investigates the new breeds of UAV, from the tiny to the gigantic Dynamic aero August/September 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Natilus has accrued over 10,000 hours of CFD to optimise its blended wing body Kona UAV as an FAA-certifiable air-freight carrier (Image courtesy of Natilus)
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