Development and Testing of an Unmanned Aerial System with Micro-Fiber Composite Actuators

The development, deployment, and operation of Unmanned Aerial Systems have grown exponentially in recent years and have provided with the opportunity to gain hands on experience with aircraft in a manner that was previously limited to institutions and companies with large budgets. This has allowed the generation and testing of aerial system advanced technologies using low cost systems. This paper presents the development of an unmanned aerial system to support the design, testing and validation of macro-fiber composite based aileron actuators. Macro-fiber composites, which consist of piezoceramic fibers and electrodes embedded in an epoxy matrix, are an attractive choice for unmanned aerial vehicles actuation because they are manufactured as lightweight, thin sheets and, when implemented as bending actuators, can provide both large structural deflections and high bandwidth. In this study, several aileron actuator designs were evaluated through a combination of theoretical and experimental analysis. The final configuration is integrated to a reduced size controlled research aircraft equipped with low cost autopilot and sensors package. The evaluation of the systemis performed in terms of performance of the actuators to produce required roll control.