Multi-fidelity Analysis of Quadrotor Biplane Tailsitter Hover-to-Cruise Transition

The versatility of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has resulted in a large recent demand for their development, these aircraft can be useful in a variety of fields such as package delivery, search and rescue, agriculture, recreation and others. In particular, quadrotor biplane tailsitter configurations have the potential to become increasingly popular due to their efficiency in both hover and forward flight, one of these aircraft is the CRC-10 developed at the Army Research Lab (ARL). This study focuses on investigating the best approach to performing accurate hover-to-cruise transition flight simulations of a scaled up, 80 lbs, pitch controlled CRC-10. A flight dynamics and controls code is coupled to both low and mid-fidelity aerodynamics to generate a precise, force balanced transition flight simulation.