Abstract

A VTOL free-wing configuration poses many interesting design choices related to hardware, navigation, and control. Avionics hardware, including the IMU, magnetometer, GPS, and airspeed sensors, can be placed in either the fuselage or wing bodies, with implementation changes needed to accommodate these decisions in a navigation system. Meanwhile, the stability augmentation system, tail, and landing gear design will impact the handling qualities for manual flight and autopilot take-off performance. This paper details practical design recommendations with discussion as applied to a testbed aircraft to enable transition flight testing to wing-borne flight and back to hover. Flight test and simulation results are included to help motivate these design considerations and validate their implementation for future flight testing through transition.

Biography

Dr. Thanakorn Khamvilai is an Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas Tech University. Prior to joining Texas Tech University, he worked as an Assistant Research Professor at the Pennsylvania State University Unmanned Aircraft Systems Research Laboratory. His research interests include avionics systems, real-time optimization, and guidance-navigation-and-control of autonomous systems. His works have been funded by DoD, NSF, FAA, and private companies. He also holds Private Pilot and Remote Pilot Certificates.