Design Optimization of Rotary-Wing Micro Air Vehicles

Abstract

In this paper, a new design methodology is introduced to automate the configuration layout design and geometric sizing of rotary-wing micro air vehicles (MAV). The objective of this design-optimization problem is to organize a given set of components and payloads such that the resulting flight vehicle has the most compact overall size and still fulfils the given physical and control constraints. Genetic algorithm (GA) is chosen as the optimization engine because of its proven robust performance. A detailed discussion is presented to explain how the rotary-wing MAV design problem can be formulated as a GA optimization problem. From the case study performed, it is demonstrated that the proposed methodology is able to achieve the design goal.