A Systems Engineering Approach to Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Design

Complex UAV systems, due to the high cost and the risks associated with their development become a prime candidate for the adoption of systems engineering methodologies. A successful UAV designer needs not only a good understanding of design, but also systems engineering approach. The design of a UAV begins with the requirements definition and extends through functional analysis and allocation, design synthesis and evaluation, and finally validation. An optimized UAV, with a minimum of undesirable side effects, requires the application of an integrated life-cycle oriented “system” approach. In this paper, conceptual design, preliminary design and detail design of an UAV based on systems engineering approach are introduced. In each stage, application of this approach is described by presenting the design flow chart and practical steps of design. A fair amount of the paper is devoted to the detail design phase.