INFLUENCE OF OVERALL LAYOUT DESIGN OF COMPOUND MULTIROTOR VEHICLES ON FLIGHT PERFORMANCE

In the design of multi-rotor vehicles, it is very important to predesign the overall layout from the perspectives of fluid dynamics, flight dynamics, and control performance. However, there is currently no unified guiding principle. In addition, traditional multi-rotor vehicles are usually not capable of high-speed flight and long endurance. This study discusses a kind of compound multi-rotor vehicle configurations and analyze the influence of the overall layout of multi-rotors on flight performance by utilizing Blade Element Momentum Theory (BEMT) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). First, the flight dynamics model of the compound multi-rotor aircraft is established based on BEMT. Next, by using the PSO algorithm, aiming at the longest cruising distance, some results of proper layouts are shown according to different rotor sizes, positions, wing area, propeller sizes and rotating speeds. Finally, according to the simulation results, the influence of each independent variable on the optimal layout is analyzed. The results show that the method proposed in this paper can be applied as a guideline for the layout design of multi-rotor vehicles, and the compound multi-rotor has better flight performance than the traditional multi-rotor.