An Analytical Design Optimization Method for Electric Propulsion Systems of Multicopter UAVs with Desired Hovering Endurance

TL;DR

This paper introduces a practical analytical method for optimizing multicopter UAV propulsion systems to meet specific hovering endurance requirements, reducing reliance on costly trial-and-error approaches.

Contribution

It develops a systematic modeling and optimization framework for propulsion components, enabling quick identification of optimal configurations from component databases.

Findings

Effective optimization of propulsion components achieved

Significant reduction in design time and cost

Validated through experiments and statistical analysis

Abstract

Multicopters are becoming increasingly important in both civil and military fields. Currently, most multicopter propulsion systems are designed by experience and trial-and-error experiments, which are costly and ineffective. This paper proposes a simple and practical method to help designers find the optimal propulsion system according to the given design requirements. First, the modeling methods for four basic components of the propulsion system including propellers, motors, electric speed controls, and batteries are studied respectively. Secondly, the whole optimization design problem is simplified and decoupled into several sub-problems. By solving these sub-problems, the optimal parameters of each component can be obtained respectively. Finally, based on the obtained optimal component parameters, the optimal product of each component can be quickly located and determined from the corresponding database. Experiments and statistical analyses demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.