A Comprehensive Design Method for Load, Stiffness, and Strength of High Altitude Long Endurance UAV

Solar powered unmanned aerial vehicles have the characteristics of high flight altitude, light structural weight, low wing load, large geometric deformation, and significant aeroelastic effects. If traditional design methods are still used to design such aircraft, there will be problems such as multiple design iterations, long design cycles, cumbersome design work, and optimization of design objectives. This article provides a detailed introduction to load design work using existing design methods through a design example. Preliminary proposal of a comprehensive design method for load/stiffness/strength based on “load configuration”. Finally, based on the design example in this article, the comprehensive design method is used to compare the analysis methods of external and internal loads, as well as the design results of the main beam. The design results show that using this method can effectively reduce the weight of the structure.