Multidisciplinary Conceptual Design Optimization of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Aviary

The increased use of rotorcraft within multiple sectors of society leads to a greater need for optimized rotorcraft flights. Researchers have focused on optimizing portions of rotorcraft flight or using actual flight tests to optimize for a particular scenario. However, these studies typically do not optimize the entire flight trajectory coupled with system parameters. In this study, further implementations of NASA's Aviary software, an aircraft analysis, design, and optimization tool built to optimize entire flights, are added so that a rotorcraft's entire flight trajectory can be optimized. A mass model using basic physics is added to allow more unorthodox vehicles to be modeled effectively, and a six-degree-of-freedom equations-of-motion model has been implemented to accurately model the flight path of the aircraft. In this paper, an optimization of the flight trajectory of a small aircraft was performed, with two main flight segments, where a payload mass is picked up and dropped off to specified coordinates, minimizing the time of flight. These implementations are to be added to NASA's Aviary to allow Aviary users to perform small aircraft flight optimizations.