Design, manufacturing and flight-testing of a fixed-wing, small-scale UAV for the transportation of blood bags to remote locations

The current work presents the design, manufacturing, and flight-testing of a fixed-wing, small-scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The research activities presented in this paper have all been conducted by the Aristotle Space & Aeronautics Team (ASAT), a Greek aerospace student team, for their participation in the international student competition Air Cargo Challenge 2022. Its mission is to carry bags of blood to a remote location. The design requirements refer to a short take-off distance of 60m of rough terrain, climb time of 60s and a cruise/loiter time of 120s. Size restrictions also apply, as the aircraft must fit inside a 1.5m x 1.5m x 0.5m volume, in its deployed form. A step-by-step presentation of the design procedure is conducted, emphasizing on the critical design decisions, such as the airfoil, cargo bay location and wing planform design. The corresponding trade studies are shown, along with the main advantages of the resulting configuration. The in-house manufacturing process is consequently described, focusing on the molds tooling, as well as on the carbon fiber and fiberglass manufacturing techniques. Finally, the results of the flight testing are shown, including the initial challenges that lead to the fine-tuning of the UAV. The test results are validated against the design data and the overall performance of the aerial vehicle is discussed.