An Investigation of Electric Propulsion in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles through a Variable-Fidelity Multidisciplinary Design Optimisation Approach

The medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) plays a key role in both military and civilian applications around the world. However, in a world where electric UAVs are increasingly becoming the norm, the MALE UAV is still primarily powered by hydrocarbon fuels and its design is very much constrained by existing general...

Design and Testing of a Vertical Take-Off and Landing UAV Optimized for Carrying a Hydrogen Fuel Cell with a Pressure Tank

Flight endurance is still a bottleneck for many types of unmanned air vehicle (UAV) applications. While battery technology improves over the years, for flights that last an entire day, batteries are still insufficient. Hydrogen-powered fuel cells offer an interesting alternative but pose stringent requirements on the platform. The required...