Design and Fabrication of Wing of a High-Payload Aerial Vehicle

The demand for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is increasing by day by day due to its wide applications in diverse sectors, ranging from commercial applications to military and disaster relief missions. This paper deals with the design optimization and fabrication of the wing, which has a vital role in the lift generation. The design methodology involves a multidisciplinary system engineering approach towards the selection of pertinent factors. Wing design begins with the conceptual design and configuration selection, wherein the measurements of the wing are deduced. Balsa wood, Birch wood and aluminium were selected for the wing fabrication. A live I/O MATLAB script was utilized to calculate the dimensions of the web, flange, and related load-bearing members. The code also checks for the failure of the spar's web under shear buckling and optimizes the thickness of the web accordingly. For a better understanding of the behaviour of materials and their response to various loads, Finite Element Analysis was done on Ansys Static Structural software. Eventually, the fabrication of the designed wing was carried out with the aid of CNC router cut and the constituent parts were assembled.