Traditional air mobility capability development consists of defining a set of requirements and subsequently designing an aircraft that satisfies these requirements. Once designed, the overall structure or topology of the aircraft is fixed. That is, the aircraft has certain fixed physical dimensions, number and sizes of rotors, engines, etc. The topology cannot be changed to accomplish missions outside of its original design envelope, and if designed for a robust mission spectrum, the aircraft may be inefficient during routine missions that do not require peak performance. The work reported here takes a different approach where a core set of components (fuselage, rotor, power plant, etc) defines the fundamental modules of the air mobility system. The modules were developed using mature and readily available technologies and designed to be quickly connected to other modules to assemble different aircraft configurations with widely varying performance characteristics. The aircraft can be reconfigured between missions to best satisfy mission requirements. Thus, the envelope of achievable performance characteristics is significantly expanded compared to a single aircraft. This concept is explored for autonomous air cargo delivery missions targeted for nominal payloads and ranges around 500 pounds and 500 nautical miles with maximum payloads up to 3500 pounds across shorter distances. Results indicate that for mission spectrums with large differences between nominal and maximum payloads and skewed towards smaller payloads, the operational cost per lb-km is significantly reduced using a modular and reconfigurable air mobility system since cargo delivery requirements can be better matched to an air vehicle system.


    Zugriff

    Zugriff prüfen

    Verfügbarkeit in meiner Bibliothek prüfen

    Bestellung bei Subito €


    Exportieren, teilen und zitieren



    Titel :

    Modular reconfigurable rotorcraft for autonomous cargo delivery


    Beteiligte:
    Davis, Joseph (Autor:in) / Park, Minje (Autor:in) / Shapiro, Isaac (Autor:in) / Costello, Mark (Autor:in)


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    01.11.2024




    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch




    UNMANNED CARGO LIFT ROTORCRAFT

    IVANS STEVEN R / ROSS BRENT C / CHAPDELAINE MATHEW et al. | Europäisches Patentamt | 2023

    Freier Zugriff

    Aerial Cargo Handling Technology for Advanced Cargo Rotorcraft

    Pettitt, L. K. / Associazione Italiana di Aeronautica ed Astronautica / Associazone Industrie Aerospaziali | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1993


    UNMANNED ROTORCRAFT WITH DUAL CARGO DOORS

    IVANS STEVEN R / BENFIELD BERLIN B | Europäisches Patentamt | 2023

    Freier Zugriff

    Efficient sizing of a cargo rotorcraft

    MEIER, WILFRIED H. / OLSON, JOHN R. | AIAA | 1988


    TALOS: An Unmanned Cargo Delivery System for Rotorcraft Landing to Unprepared Sites

    Paduano, James / Wissler, John / Drozeski, Graham et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2015