Conceptual Design, Development, Test and System Identification of a Novel Tri-Rotor Configuration for a VTOL Fixed Wing Aircraft

In this paper a novel tri-rotor configuration is proposed with the goal of enabling vertical take-off and landing capability to a canard fixed-wing aircraft while minimizing the overall weight of the vehicle and the aerodynamic drag developed in horizontal flight. The novelty in the presented configuration is related not only to the thrust vectoring capabilities of all three rotors but also to the constraints surrounding the action of the rear rotor, which will be required to operate both in vertical and horizontal flight phases while drawing power from an internal combustion engine fixed inside the aircraft’s fuselage. The proposed design will later be translated into a test vehicle, which will serve as a proof of concept of the solutions developed. Finally, both a time and a frequency-response based system identification technique is applied to flight test data in order to obtain a more robust computational model of the aircraft’s dynamics.