Preliminary Design of Agriculture UAV with Hybrid Tilt-Body Configuration

This paper focuses the first phase development of VTOL high-speed UAV for precision agriculture. The UAV are developed by step to step design approach to obtain frozen agriculture UAV design. The development is driven by design requirements and objectives (DRO) constituting statements to control design process. Based on the DRO, the mission profile of the UAV describing whole flight operation is determined including vertical take-off, cruise for spraying mission, monouvre and landing. The novelty design configuration is the hybrid tilt-body configuration with diamond shape wings equipped with technologies of low drift spraying and obstacle avoidance technologies. The weight breakdown of UAV is determined iteratively from the derived equation as a function of Aspect ratio and wing span. The power loading and wing loading for the flight mission are evaluated for the design point using matching chart. The designed configuration is then analyzed by aerodynamics, structure, weight and balance, stability, systems and performance. The design results of agriculture UAV show that almost all design requirements are fulfilled.