Abstract:
The purpose of this research is to investigate and develop conceptual design
methodologies and computational tools appropriate to the design and analysis of
low-observable Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs), performing a wide
variety of missions, with various payload and performance requirements, as well
as a wide range of operational constraints, from subsonic to high supersonic flight
regimes.
Undoubtedly, unmanned aircraft have transformed many aspects of aeronautics
and aviation, with military applications often leading these transformational
efforts. UCAVs have emerged as a potential strategy to counter technological,
operational, and economical challenges to the future of aerial warfare. These
challenges include an aging fleet of 4th generation fighters, the deployment of
new, advanced 4+ and 5th generation platforms, the reported high vulnerability of
current unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as the future development of
hypersonic vehicles and weapons.
In order to investigate future aircraft configurations, the GENUS aircraft design
environment was envisioned by Prof. Howard Smith at Cranfield University’s
Aircraft Design Group in 2012. This framework relies on a central architecture
with high degrees of modularity and flexibility capable of designing, analysing,
and optimising several species of aircraft with similar analysis tools, revealing the
real differences and potential advantages of new designs.
Mass estimation, propulsion, aerodynamics, performance, radar cross section
estimation, and aero-thermal analysis tools have been integrated into the GENUS
framework in order to investigate the design space of UCAVs. Validation of these
methods has been hampered due to the often restricted access to quality data of
UCAVs and similar configurations against which to compare and from which to
generate higher fidelity models. Specific steps for improving the accuracy of the
methods in the future have been identified and proposed in §9.2.
Design space explorations performed in this research include a mission
parameter trade study for subsonic UCAVs in Hi-Lo-Hi missions, the conceptual
and preliminary design of a UCAV platform with performance matching that of
current 5th generation fighters, a fully supersonic deep-interdiction mission trade
study, and a high-supersonic (M ≥ 3.0) carrier-based UCAV for time-critical strike
missions.
