Research on integrated optimization design method of high-efficiency motor propeller system for UAVs with multi-states

Abstract

With the popularity of electric multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (EMRUAV), the problem of low efficiency of the motor propeller system (MPS) becomes serious especially for EMRUAVs which have multiple working states. To solve this problem, an integrated optimization design method for high-efficiency MPS is proposed using an improved parallel particle swarm optimization and differential evolution (PSODE) hybrid algorithm. First, the brushless motor as well as the variable-speed and the adjustable-pitch propellers is modelled. Then considering the characteristics of the motor and the propeller sufficiently, an integrated optimization method for variable-speed and adjustable-pitch MPS is proposed by utilizing the improved PSODE. Specially, the self-organizing feature map theory is added to substitute the traditional ''winner-take-all'' method in the interactive study of the improved PSODE. Next, the optimization of a small electric-powered tilt quad rotor (TQR) which has four states: hovering, cruising, transition and maximum speed is carried out. At last, the wind-tunnel experiments are implemented to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed optimization method. The results indicate that the adjustable-pitch MPS is more suitable for EMRUAVs which have multiple working states, and that the improved PSODE has faster convergence speed and better global search ability than other optimization methods.