HIGH SPEED VTOL UAV WITH SMART TECHNOLOGIES

CheolHo Lim Vice President Korea Aerospace Research Institute 45 Eoeun-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-333, Korea Ph : 82-42-860-2020 Fax : 82-42-860-2929 Email : chlim@kari.re.kr Soojung Hwang Senior Researcher Korea Aerospace Research Institute 45 Eoeun-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-333, Korea Ph : 82-42-860-2706 Fax : 82-42-860-2929 Email : soojung@kari.re.kr

ABSTRACT
Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) has developed for a robust and intelligent tilt rotor UAV exhibiting high-speed cruise and vertical takeoff and landing capabilities since 2002. Various smart technologies have been applied to the UAV, fully autonomous flight including take off and landing, real time health monitoring, see and avoid collision avoidance, automatic mission reconfiguration. Small-scaled flight demonstrators successfully achieved the mission of fully autonomous tilt rotor flight in 2008. Major features of Smart UAV are illustrated with the developmental history in this paper.

INTRODUCTION
The tilt rotor has recently risen as a strong alternative for the future high speed VTOL air vehicle concept in civil and the other applications. The best advantage of the tilt rotor concept is known to have higher flight speed and endurance performance superior to conventional helicopter. In the early stage of tilt rotor development, several unexpected mishaps happened. However, in spite of many adversities, the tilt rotor concept has been actively researched and developed. Recently, the commercial tilt rotor aircraft has been on the airworthness process, and waiting for a launch of passenger transport. One of the most prominent trends in the recent aeronautical field is an emergence of unmanned aerial vehicle. Many people look out that the unmanned aerial vehicles replace many manned aircraft in near future, especially in the search or fight missions. These days, various configurations of unmanned aerial vehicle have been designed and utilized in many applications. Tilt rotor UAV is one of those noticeable applications (Ref.1 and Ref.2). Tilt rotor UAV has both advantages of fixed wing and rotary aircrafts. It can take off and land vertically, and cruise with high speed and fuel efficiencies of the level of fixed wing aircraft.

DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY
Smart UAV Figure 1 shows Smart Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (SUAV) which Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) has developed for a robust and intelligent tilt rotor UAV exhibiting high-speed cruise and vertical takeoff and landing capabilities since 2002. The maximum takeoff weight of SUAV is 1,000kg. The maximum and maneuver speeds are 475 km/h and 400 km/hr, respectively. Highly reliable design and operating concepts were implemented in the critical subsystems such as power
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train, flight control, and avionics systems. SUAV can fly in three flight modes ; helicopter, conversion, and airplane modes. After vertical takeoff in helicopter mode, the rotor is tilted by preprogrammed conversion flight envelope. Various smart technologies have been applied to SUAV, fully autonomous flight including take off and landing, real time health monitoring, see and avoid collision avoidance, automatic mission reconfiguration. The composition of SUAV system can be seen from Figure 1. The smart technologies are mainly incorporated in the platform and payload systems. Figure 2 shows civil application examples of SUAV. Many other applications beyond these are possible such as surveillance, monitoring, exploration, telecommunication, etc.

Figure 1. Smart Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (SUAV)

Figure 2. Civil Applications of SUAV

Design and Integration In the initial stage of SUAV development, tilt rotor was selected as a baseline platform configuration from intensive trade study. From the study, tilt rotor showed more efficient performance for SUAV requirements than the other candidate configurations of stopped rotor, compound gyrocopter. Especially, tilt rotor showed much higher endurance in the mission of surveillance because it could be operated by airplane mode during the most of mission profile except take off and landing.

Figure 3. CFD Analysis for SUAV

Figure 2. WT test for SUAV powered test model

Various methodologies of design, analysis, and evaluation methods were applied to SUAV design. Figure 3 shows CFD analysis results for the full configuration of SUAV. Three configurations of isolated rotor, unpowered, and powered configurations were analyzed by computational method with dynamic overlapping grid scheme. Wind tunnel tests were performed for evaluating the aerodynamic data of SUAV. Three types of unpowered static, powered static and dynamic wind tunnel test models were designed and fabricated. Most of wind tunnel tests, except forced vibration test, were performed in KARI subsonic wind tunnel of 3m by 4m test section. From the extensive tests, it can be obtained valuable data such as proprotor efficiency, control surface effectiveness, and dynamic stability data, and so on. Airframe structure of SUAV was designed for minimizing weight and fabrication process under the given design requirements of vibration, dynamic stability, load, strength and environments. Composite materials were applied in most of structures to save the weight, and the number of
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component parts was minimized to save the cost. Figure 5 shows the first bending vibration mode from the finite element analysis. Various static and dynamic structural tests were performed in the evaluation process. Figure 6 shows a static structural test fixture on SUAV test model.

Figure 5. Structural Vibration Analysis

Figure 6. Static Structural Test

The power plant system of SUAV can be made of engine, drive-line, nacelle conversion, and rotor systems. A turbo shaft engine of P&W X206 is located at center fuselage and drives both rotors through center and pylon gearboxes. The drive-line includes gear boxes, drive shafts, cooling and lubrication systems. The super-finished gears were developed and used in the gear boxes to enhance the performance and durability. A dry sump type of lubrication concept with oil jets was applied to all three gearboxes. Nacelle conversion actuators located at the wingtips drive the nacelles including rotor system between the tilt angles of helicopter and airplane modes. SUAV has three bladed, gimbaled, stiff-in plane rotor system. The SUAV gimbaled hub was designed based on automotive style mechanical constant velocity joint that uses large ball bearings driving deeply grooved hub elements, and tension-torsion strap transferring CF force of blade to hub. All the actuators in rotor pitch control and nacelle conversion are electric motor driven with redundancy. Figure 7 shows designed proprotor hub and assembled rotor system. Figure 8 shows a stress analysis result of bevel gear installed in the center gear box of SUAV.

Figure 7. SUAV Rotor System

Figure 8. Stress Analysis of SUAV Bevel Gear

The flight control system (FTS) of SUAV was developed for fully autonomous flight with health monitoring and collision avoidance functions. Hardware of the FTS was composed of digital flight control computer, local precision position system, DGPS/INS, collision avoidance system, electric actuator system, air data system, and radio altimeter. The operational flight program (OFP) of SUAV was designed with fault detection and intelligent mission control algorithms. Both hardware and software of SUAV FTS has dual redundancy. Figure 9 shows autonomous flight control logic of SUAV OFP. The communication system of SUAV was designed to have the minimum 95% reliability in 200km distance with double channels on up and down links respectively. The ground control
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system (GCS) of SUAV are composed of pilot bay, navigation bay, external pilot box, ground control vehicle, shelter assembly system, observation bay, and transmission bay. Major functions of the GCS are aircraft control, data link control, flight information display and management, mission planning, fault detection. Figure 10 shows the SUAV ground control system.

Figure 9. SUAV Autonomous Flight Control Logic

Figure 10. SUAV Ground Control System

Test and Evaluation The function, performance, and reliability of SUAV has been validated by various tests such as component test, interface test, ground integration test, environment test, Ironbird test, four degree of freedom (4-DOF) ground test, tethering test, small scaled flight demonstrator test, and full scale flight test. Currently, the full scale flight test is in preparation after successfully completing the small scaled flight test and ground integration test. One of the unique tests in the development process of SUAV was Ironbird test (Ref.3). The power plant system of SUAV was verified by Ironbird ground test. Ironbird was served as a test-bed for developmental testing of the power plant system. The function and performance of engine, drive line, nacelle conversion, and rotor systems were evaluated by a building block approach of Ironbird test concept. It could save large amounts of time and cost, and considerably reduce developmental risk as potential faults could be found as early as possible during the test procedure. It could also eliminate the need of whirl tower test facility regarded as a big burden in the development of rotorcraft. In addition, it had an advantage of testing actual rotor hubs and controls with proprotors. As a result, the developmental testing period could be effectively shortened. The measured test data by SUAV GCS and Ironbird data acquisition system (DAS) showed satisfactory results which meet the developmental specifications of SUAV. Figure 11 shows Ironbird testing with SUAV GCS and Ironbird DAS.

Figure 11. SUAV Ironbird Ground Test

Small scaled flight demonstrators were developed to prove the flight control algorithm as well as the tilt rotor concept. It successfully flew in helicopter, conversion, and airplane modes. The fully autonomous flight including take off and landing was demonstrated with double channeled data link. Figure 12 shows tethering test and free flight test of 40% small scaled flight demonstrator of SUAV. After confirming the basic flight characteristics of helicopter mode through the tethering test with safety wire, the free flight was executed. The free flight test included helicopter mode flight, conversion, and airplane mode flight. All three modes of free flights were successfully performed at Goheung KARI flight test site. The conversion from rotary mode to fixed wing mode was smoothly executed by following the preprogrammed conversion corridor of flight speed and rotor conversion angle. The gathered data through the free flight tests were implemented to the flight control software of full scaled SUAV. Many valuable information could be obtained with relatively low cost and risk from the free flight test of small scaled demonstrator, especially tilt rotor flight characteristics of stability, controllability, conversion dynamics, and so on.

Figure 12. Tethering and Free Flight Tests of SUAV Flight Demonstrator (40% Scaled)

Figure 13. EMI Test of SUAV

Figure 14. HILS Test of SUAV

Figure 13 shows an electro-magnetic interference (EMI) test of SUAV at KARI environmental test facility. Although all the subsystems constituting SUAV were provided as passed their EMI tests respectively, the whole integrated configuration of SUAV should be finally checked in order to confirm the interference effect among the subsystems. Figure 14 shows HILS test on the ground to simulate the flight behaviors of SUAV before the real flight control by pilot. The pilot can get training in operating SUAV, and reduce time and risk in the real flight operation. During the evaluation process of flight behaviors in HILS and real operations such as 4-DOF and tethering test by the pilot, all the gathered data were input to compliment the flight control algorithm of digital flight control computer (DFCC). In real free flight, SUAV flies a fully autonomous flight with the
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preprogrammed command under monitoring by the pilot in the GCS. Figure 15 shows 4-DOF test to gather the dynamic characteristics data of SUAV before the flight test. After the 4-DOF test, tethering test was performed to evaluate the helicopter mode flight characteristics as shown in Figure 16. For the tethering test of full scaled SUAV, a big tower crane was setup on the flight test site. A safety wire above the airframe for emergency can be seen from Figure 16.

Figure 15. 4-DOF Ground Test of SUAV

Figure 16. Tethering Test of SUAV

CONCLUDING REMARKS
A robust and intelligent tilt rotor UAV exhibiting high-speed cruise and VTOL capabilities has been developed by KARI since 2002. Various methods of design, analysis, and validation tests were applied in the development process of SUAV. Several ground tests were uniquely designed and applied for SUAV in order to save the developmental cost and time. Also, various smart technologies, fully autonomous flight, real time health monitoring, see and avoid collision avoidance, and automatic mission reconfiguration, were applied to SUAV,. The fully autonomous flight was successfully achieved by the small scaled flight demonstrator of SUAV. It can be concluded that the smart tilt rotor UAV was successfully developed, and can be applied to many kinds of applications in near future.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was performed for the Smart UAV Development Program, one of the 21st Century Frontier R&D Programs funded by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Korea.

REFERNCES
1. Soojung Hwang, M.K. Lee, S.H. Oh and S.W. Choi, Collision Avoidance Maneuver Simulation of Tilt Rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, 44th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit, Reno, January 2006. Mike Hirschberg, Bell Makes First Flight with New Eagle Eye Demonstrator, Vertiflite, Vol.52, No.1, Spring 2006. Soojung Hwang and Seongwook Choi, Ironbird Ground Test for Tilt Rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Science, 11(4), p313-p318, 2010

2. 3.