22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-1.3.2

DESIGN OF OPTIMUM PAYLOADS TO MEET THE MISSION REQUIREMENTS OF UAV SYSTEMS

A. K. Sinha (1), C. Bil (1) , M. L. Scott (1), P. Mohandas (2)
(1) Department of Aerospace Engineering, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Victoria, Australia; (2) Jawaharlal Nehru University, Secunderabad, India

Keywords: uav

The development of Unmanned Airborne Vehicle (UAV) systems for deployment in a variety of civil, paramilitary and military roles has proved to be a cost-effective option over existing systems. One of the major weak links that exist in the development of UAV systems is the design of an optimum mission payload - a payload that meets the requirements of various System Design Parameters (SDPs). This paper attempts to apply a systems methodology that considers SDP requirements for optimisation of a UAV system payload. The SDPs considered in this paper for demonstration are operational needs, reliability and maintainability. These disparate design parametric requirements are considered consecutively by an indexing process. A single figure of merit is developed in a format that facilitates the comparison of various UAV mission payloads by considering the degree to which the payload meets the SDP requirements. The comparative study results in the identification of the optimum payload.

view full paper