Topology optimization of UAV components

Unmanned aerial vehicles (also known as drones) constitute a sector of the Canadian aerospace industry that is growing very rapidly. Because there is a broad range of applications for drones, there is also a wide variety of drone configurations. This, coupled with the small size of drones, leads to a scarcity of convenient rules-of-thumb and guidelines for the design of drone structures. In addition, because of the small size of drones, small reductions in the mass of a drone structure lead to relatively large proportional increases in drone payload. This project will use a computational optimization technique, topology optimization, to generate efficient structural designs for the drone configuration being constructed by Drone Delivery Canada, the industrial partner for this project.

Faculty Supervisor:

Craig Steeves

Student:

Bharat Bhaga

Partner:

Drone Delivery Canada

Discipline:

Aerospace studies

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

University of Toronto