Hello Everyone,
I would like to share a project that I started as my Final Year Project in the year 2012/13.
The "Folding Wings" design solution was developed keeping following things in mind:
1. VTOL Capability
2. Standard operation of a multi copter (Trirotor)
3. Standard operation of an airplane
4. Reducing Wing surface area while in multirotor mode to have a resistance towards Cross winds.
The unique thing about foding wings is that it is a splitted airfoil as you can see in the video, the spillted airfoil has two parts. One is Fixed (The part which forms the arms of a tricopter in the attachments) and the other is moveable that is folded to reduce wing surface area and angular inertia of machine to boost the machine agility while in hover mode.http://diydrones.com/video/folding-wings-concept
They project was designed and fabricated from scratch to cater the problem statement (Problem Statement : To develop an aircraft that can both cover long distances fast and efficiently as well as operate Efficiently and show agility like a multi rotor (Tricopter).
Since the aircraft you see was totally hand fabricated and as a first step its intent was to make a prototype that incorporates all the mechanical details therefore we were left with no time to properly develop the control system and check the platforms actual capability.
Now, here I want experts to comment on the concept and help on how to develop this further.
Kindly provide pros and cons, and ideas and improvements would be highly appreciated.
Replies
Very Cool Project