Design of a medium range tactical UAV and improvement of its performance by using winglets

This paper presents the design, performance analysis and aerodynamic improvement of a designed medium range tactical unmanned aerial vehicle. Main requirements are set as following; cruising altitute above 3500m, endurance of approximately 10-12 hours, range of 150 km and payload of 60 kg. The conventional design phase is based on the employment of historical equations and experiences. The aerodynamic improvement process is related with rise in span efficiency by employement and comparison of different wingtip geometries, which results rise in L/D ratio, climb rate, endurance or reduction in weight, required power. In short, the study underlines a cost effective aerodynamic improvement process by reducing engineering time and complicated algorithms for an UAV. In addition, considerable difference between conceptual and CFD L/D ratio results have underlined the validation need of conceptual design outputs by nowadays computational or experimental tools.