Concept One Summary
The mission requirements for the BMFA Payload Challenge have been outlined and assessed in order to ensure the design process is looking to maximise the correct performance characteristics and variables. This will ensure that each step of the conceptual, and eventually the preliminary, design phase is working to produce the most competitive aircraft.
Scoring analysis was carried out to determine a suitable target for the structural efficiency of the UAV, which was found to be around by looking at previous BMFA competition winner scores. Performance parameters were then obtained for various flight conditions from literature, and using formulations for the Wing Loading and Power Loading a sizing diagram was created [Fig 2, Sizing and Constraint Analysis]. The sizing diagram resulted in a suitable Wing Loading of 12.55 kg m^−2^ and Power Loading of 10.81 W kg^−1^ and the design point can be used to approximate a maximum take-off weight which will make it possible to determine a suitable wing area and power requirement.
Separate scoring charts for each component, with higher scoring multipliers for the more important considerations, were used to analyse each sub assembly of a UAV thought to be needed for the BMFA challenge. From the configuration scoring process, three designs were chosen using a combination of the components with the highest scores. The final three designs were a flying wing, rod and pod and tubular fuselage respectively. A flying wing will therefore be taken forward as the primary design concept. The next stage of design is to complete the conceptual design which will include defining conceptual parameters including, but not limited to, the wing planform, control surface sizing and CG point estimations.