2. DISCUSSION 2
Computational & Experimental Analysis on Robust Design of MAVs for better endurance
Robust Design Method is well known by the name of Taguchi Method which improvises
engineering productivity. It basically focuses on fundamental functions of the process or a
product and helping the concurrent engineering with facilitating the design. A Robust Design
method prescribes a systematic procedure for minimizing the design sensitivity which is also
called by the name of parameter design. Hence a powerful method to reduce the product cost;
improvises its quality and also reduces development interval. Robust Design is a way to make
the final product consistent and variant where it is subject to a variety of noises. The developer of
Robust Design Method made it efficient for all the companies that want to reduce their
development cost.
Micro Air Vehicle has always been a frontier at current research. In recent research, it
was found that LAR wing with Zimmerman planform, which is already proven to be desirable in
MAV design, comprising of four subunits with specific tasks and targets the MAV Unit specifies
the problems and resolve it by the Robust Design Cycle (Weiss et al., 2013). High fidelity
computational studies and optimization are used for analyzing and designing the cycle.
Why a Robust Design Method?
Robust Design Method plays a vital role in improving engineering productivity, this
method has been evolved over the last five decades and many of the companies are satisfied with
it. Many companies all over the world have saved millions of dollars by applying this method to
avoid wastage (Tu, Yeoh & Liu, 2008). The method is used in many diverse industries like
Software, Telecommunication, Electronics, Automobiles, etc there is a number of companies
who are currently using the method to save their money and hence a powerful method of Robust
Design is now the first preference for the companies. In companies, Robust Design Method has
used to reduce the development time and cost.
Robust Method is efficient for companies to reduce their cost and make it work
effectively in various fields, many companies including automobiles and electronics are using
such method for reducing their cost and this method is quite helpful for all of them.
3. DISCUSSION 3
Advantages of Robust Design Method
Here are some advantages of Robust Design Method that you should be aware of, the
advantages of Robust Design are as follows
• Robust Design Method has many benefits one which is really effective is the quality of
robustness is great.
• The product will have more appeal to the buyers, as it can be used in a variety of situations.
• Robust Design Method is cheaper and cost efficient.
• The Method is also Customer Friendly.
Drawbacks of Robust Method
Advantages always come up with disadvantages/drawbacks of the robust method are given
below they can be helpful in major decision making of the companies for choosing this method,
no doubt robust method is a great method but being decisive one should know about its drawback
too.
1. The major drawback of Robust Design Method is it effectively deal with the noise, the
designer must be aware of this noise (Tagliabue, Kamel, Siegwart & Nieto, 2019).
2. Another drawback is the robust design is done in a Taguchi’s way that becomes large
quickly, considering a different thing that actually affects the product such as control variable ad
noise variables, it will then be a number of trials which eventually add will add expense a lot of
trials require money.
3. The last drawback is using Orthogonal arrays. This assumes that the noise factor is
independent which is helpful in setting up the experiments, but this assumption is not at all good
in most of the cases.
4. Companies have to face large competition edge in the market, which can also be risky for
the companies goodwill.
4. DISCUSSION 4
Strategical Idea
The Robustness Strategy provides the crucial methodology for systematical arrival that will
make designs less sensitive. It can be used for both product designing and manufacturing product
designing. There are basically 5 primary tools used in Robustness Method
These are five primary tools which are used in Robust Design Method to make it efficient
and effective. Robust Design Method is mainly on the pillars of these five tools and they are
incomplete without these steps.
Steps in Robust Parameter Design
The Robust Parameter comprises of 4 steps
1. Problem Formulation
2. Data Collection/ Simulation
3. Factors Affecting Analysis
4. Prediction/Confirmation (Hong, Song, Liu & Xu, 2011).
• The effects of the controlling factors are calculated further and results are analyzed to select
the optimum setting.
• Prediction is done in the last step of the product design and then the confirmation is given
to the experiments under some conditions.
There are many advantages of Robust Design which also includes good quality, cheaper
and more efficient and customer friendly, moreover the disadvantages for companies they have to
deal with a large competitive edge. The robust design is developed by Dr Genichi Taguchi, he
developed the use of the design of experiments as an efficient way of exploring the design space.
Robust Design Method is now used by many companies and it is one of those methods which
actually want to adopt, as a result, their low cost of development but the company has to face the
large competition in the market. Dr Genichi Taguchi after a great research work bought this method
which seems to be helpful to many companies to reduce the cost of their expenses. Robust Design
5. DISCUSSION 5
Method is beneficial to all and it can be the said as the smartest method for the company. Robust
Design Method is now efficiently used in the companies.
Computational & Experimental Analysis on Robust Design of MAVs for better endurance
The word MAV stands for Micro Air Vehicle or Micro Aerial Vehicle, is a small
autonomous aircraft with size ranging from a handheld drone to tiny modern models around 5
centimeters, is around the size of an insect and is used for remote observation and other space
programs. The size may vary based on practical implementation and requirements, and the MAV’s
developed are mostly autonomous aerial vehicle used for surveillance, research, and other business
purposes (Heng et al., 2014). The MAV’s are a miniature version of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
(UAV) and are being developed as part of military research and hobby purposes. Due to the smaller
size of these crafts flying range and time of flight is less, and the developed crafts have a range of
100-200 meters and flight time of around 15-20 minutes. Hence these camera mounted tiny crafts
are used for an aerial view and human unreachable places. The small size of the craft makes it
difficult to fly long ranges over 100-200 meters as the miniature craft visibility decreases making
it hard to maneuver. There is no truly existing micro-scaled MAV’s developed yet but attempts
and research is going on to build a miniature craft sizing around 7.5-12 centimeters.
Many Universities and research scientists are working on these miniature crafts for future
development and defense research team from the USA is also working on a MAV for combat field
and security purposes. The United States army owns a mini-sized UAV called RQ-16 T-Hawk
which was developed by Honeywell an American company that produces aerospace systems and
engineering services. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is an agency of the
United States of America which is working on the advanced versions of these miniature flying
crafts and research on the next levels of these technologies. Universities called TU Delft from the
Netherlands developed the smallest ornithopter called DelFly which measured 10 centimeters and
weighed around 3 grams and another ornithopter was developed in Harvard University which
measured 3 centimeters and USA is working on the further versions of T-Hawk MAV (Heng et
al., 2014). A flapping-wing MAV was developed in Taiwan by a university called Tamkang
University which measured 20 centimeters and weighed around 8 grams. The British Army used
a miniature copter called Black Hornet Nano which had a dimension of around 10x25 centimeters
6. DISCUSSION 6
which was developed by Prox Dynamics of Norway. DARPA is working on a next-generation
technology called Nano Air Vehicle (NAV), which is going to measure less than 7.5 centimeters.
Computational Analysis on the design of MAVs
There are many kinds of MAVs present in the development stages like the fixed wing
miniature crafts, flapping-wing miniature crafts, and mini-copters. These different kinds of
underdevelopment crafts vary mainly based on its wings and design, and these designs have their
own drawbacks and advantages when compared to one another. The robustness of these models
depends totally on the wing design on which they are built and act accordingly based on the
situation. One among those models is the Ornithopter which is a flapping-wing miniature craft, in
this craft flight is because of the flapping of wings like that to birds, here in this model the initial
ski push has to be given by the craft operator. This craft is designed based on the flight similarities
to a bird and there were many models based on this design like the DelFly series which had a
design similar to that of a dragonfly and had a tail like that of a dragonfly. It was built as light as
possible and small in size which was able to fit in a single hand. In the advance improvements of
Ornithopter, researchers have achieved takeoffs and landings without any initial thrust from the
operator. The other model is Ducted Fan craft which was developed in the USA which had Vertical
Takeoff and Landing capability. In models used cylindrical shroud or duct which had an
arrangement of a propeller mounted inside the duct and the rotation of these propellers inside the
ducts produced the thrust and further improvements were made in this model to develop miniature
versions.
One of the early models developed based on the ducted fans was T-Hawk series which was
pretty big in size for miniature craft there was no initial thrust needed because it had VTOL. And
many further advancements were made in this model which had a good flight range and time of
flight this model served the United States Army for a long time. And the next model was Nano
Copter which was a micro helicopter, this unmanned aerial vehicle worked same as a helicopter in
which the thrust was achieved by the rotation of the blades of the top of the copter (Harikumar,
Dhall & Bhat, 2019). The miniature copter developed by Prox Dynamics for the British Army the
early models developed was Black Hornet Nano which had a dimension of 10x2.5 centimeters
which had a decent flight time and a decent flight range which was used by the army for monitoring
7. DISCUSSION 7
and surveillance in the combat field. This was being used as a pocket reconnaissance and
surveillance. One more model is the Entomopter which has a flight like an insect based on
flapping-wing aerodynamics, these are a kind of Ornithopter based on a flight mechanism of an
insect. No perfect models are developed based on this but future advancements are going on in this
field by researchers.
Experimental Analysis of the design of MAVs
In the experimental analysis part, we take into consideration the practical implementation,
limitation, and advancements in the practical implementation of these miniature aircraft. Firstly,
taking into consideration the various MAVs and their practical implementations truly there is no
practically existing MAV now, only some of the scalable models are present for now and the future
advancements may change this. Let’s begin with the Ornithopter based models like the DelFly
series which had three variants DelFly I, DelFly II and the DelFly Micro which is the advanced
version, the first two versions were developed in Wageningen University and the later advanced
version was developed in the TU Delft University. The first two versions developed were scalable
models, the third variant was the most miniature one with a size of 10 centimeters and weighing
around 3 grams it was only slightly bigger than the dragonfly but had a noise because of the motor
and was not energy efficient and had a very less flight time and the battery of the aircraft added a
1 gram mass to the 3 gram aircraft which made the researchers cut down some of the essential
sensors. The other model based on the Ducted Fan design had very practical imperfections when
turning the scalable model into a miniature model and so there is no existing miniature model. The
practical scalable model of this was the T-Hawk series which later saw very practical
implementations in combat field and other rescue missions, this model was owned by the United
States Army.
The first model developed in the Ducted fan design of the T-Hawk series was the RQ-16
T-Hawk this saw a lot of practical usage in the field of Defense and other commercial usages.
DARPA took the responsibility of the further advancements of this model and brought a lot of
optimizations to the model and further research is going on these models. And the agency is
working on a Nano Air Vehicle (NAV), a more advanced one than the existing ones. The model
developed had a good flight time 40 minutes and a practical ceiling height of around 3200 meters
8. DISCUSSION 8
and range of 11 kilometers and could fly at a speed of 70 knots and weighed around 8 kilograms
only the problem was size but was very useful equipment. And a number of sensors could be
mounted on this model (Asadpour et al., 2014). The next was Nano copter which is basically a
helicopter and the first model developed on this design was the Black Hornet Nano a pocket-sized
helicopter, this was the most successful model in the practical implementation which had an
electric motor to run the blades and the whole model weighed 16 grams with the battery and had
a number of advantages than the other models.
Conclusion
The MAVs play a major role in the Defense and other commercial sectors and has a very
practical implementation in the future, as the model is still first-generation development stages
now but has a very scope for future advancement and use. The first stage development models are
serving many fields and still being used and improved and may change the UAV sector of aviation.
9. DISCUSSION 9
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