New Verticopter-II design enhances the capabilities of original design.
Oliver Garrow from Garrow Aircraft writes:-
Our research and development didn’t stop at Verticopter 1.5 and we explored a new STOVL and VTOL configuration simply called Verticopter-II.
The idea was to conceive a STOVL airframe that was also suited to haul freight and bulky loads, including, for example, medical equipment, stretchers, and enhance the capabilities of the original Verticopter® which is destined to be mostly a passenger transport. Verticopter-II is no longer a flying wing but a more classic cantilever wing configuration. It no longer relies on power thrust vectoring but on a hybrid system with two in-wing fans and one rear-mounted turbofan. Some amount of thrust vectoring can still be used but only for attitude stabilization reason. Our reference product is a 4-seater airframe, with a wingspan of 36 feet, 1,000 lbs of useful payload and a cruise speed of 350 knots (as per our X-plane simulations). To achieve that level of cruise performance, the two lift fans will receive a set of fan doors, which fully optimize aerodynamics at high speed.
Development of Proto5, our new proof-of-concept (POC) UAV for Verticopter-II
Before introducing a new design, we go through the same systematic process that was done for the engineering of the original Verticopter®. We start with a 3D conceptual design database created in Blender 2.5, then we create a second and mirrored design database for the flight simulator X-plane 9, optimizing airfoil, weight distribution, landing gear placement, etc… then assess simulated flight response for the whole flight envelop going from CTOL to VTOL. Once the simulations are satisfactory, we move on to the fast prototyping stage and build a scaled UAV using Autodesk Inventor 2012 (so as a 3rd 3D design database).
Proto5 is a 1/10th scaled version of the 4-seater Verticopter-II airframe and is mostly composite, high-density foam with plywood, fiberglass and Kevlar re-enforcements. Unlike previous VC UAVs, Proto5 lends itself very well for onboard flight stabilization and we are happy to report the excellent work achieved by the new OpenPilot.org electronic unit called CopterControl, which includes a 3-axis gyro and a 3-axis accelerometer. Such stability augmentation hardware is required when hovering any lightweight airframe like Proto5 which weighs in at less than 8 lbs.
