General airframe design and implementation with low-cost for multi-rotor type helicopters

Abstract

Recently, Quad-rotor type helicopters which are representative of Multi-rotor type helicopters have been extensively developed over the world. The Multi-rotors are expected to replace Single-rotor type helicopters as an industrial helicopter because of their simplicity of the structure and good maintainability. In this paper, we focused on the operation problems of previous industrial helicopters and applied the Multi-rotors by a generalized design method. The generalization of the design method is performed considering variation of requirements of airframe specifications. In addition, we considered using commercial components rather than customized components in each process, so we achieved cost reduction compared with previous study. At first, we introduce the required specifications of a small pesticide application in this study and present the airframe design method. And then, we tuned parameters with presented simulation model and implement a multi-rotor type helicopter following the design method. Finally, we show the flight result and present the effectiveness of the design method. © 2012 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.