ENOLA modular drone design complete

The second work package of ENOLA is focused on designing, building, modelling and testing a modular UAV (drone). We’re happy to report that the design phase of the work has been completed. For the design of this modular aircraft, we have collaborated with the local company UAV Works. Together, we have come up with a design that enables 4 different basic configurations: quadcopter, hexacopter, hexacopter with tandem propellers (that we call Y6) and octacopter (tandem version of the quadcopter, that we will refer to as X8). Below, you can see all these configurations:

Crucially, the fuselage and physical characteristics of the arms, propellers, etc. is exactly the same in all four configuration, and thus we will be able to produce a fair comparison in which these features won’t constitute a source of performance or acoustic signature differences: only the configuration will produce these differences. Thus, we will be able to find the advantages and disadvantages of each of these design concepts. In addition to the basic four configurations, the modular drone design allows for changing the length of the arms, from 30 cm to 35 cm. This will provide us the option to evaluate the impact of this change, which mainly translates to more or less cross-influence of one propeller onto the others, and more or less aerodynamic interaction with the fuselage.

Now that the design of the modular drone is completed, we are progressing in two fronts. First, we are applying al the numerical modelling methodologies that we have develop to the different drone configurations, ir order to build a reliable model that is able to predict both aerodynamic performance and acoustic characteristics. This model will enable us to inspect in detail the aerodynamic and acoustic phenomena of each design, for instance via data-driven modal decompositions. In parallel, we are commissioning the drone and preparing or experimental facilities in order to measure both performance and noise and allow the validation and continuous improvement of the numerical model, so that we will have all the tools to offer physical, validated reasons to support noise-optimized design guidelines, the final objective of project ENOLA.