Large Scale Unmanned Aircraft Design Testbed

Project goal: To design a large-scale unmanned aircraft system to support flight-testing of newly designed parachute-recovery system. To help mitigate the costs arising from failure of large-scale unmanned aircraft systems, the team designed the testbed to flight-test the autonomous parachute system designed by Team 17078.A four-foot-diameter hexacopter was designed and built using mostly existing hardware. The structure was designed to protect essential, and costly,components from damage while allowing the inexpensive and easily replaceable frame to absorb the impact. Structural integrity was analyzed using finite element analysis. Motor testing was performed to validate the thrust outputs of all six motors to ensure accurate performance capabilities. Control configuration and system integration were finalized before flight-testing.The hexacopter design satisfied the requirements for parachute flight-testing.