Design and Manufacturing of Vertical Takeoff and

Landing, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Muhammad Ahmad Azhar1, Zeeshan Aslam1, Mazhar Iqbal Gondal1
1,2
Department of Mechanical Engineering,

Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS),

Islamabad, Pakistan

Abstract— This project presents designing and fabrication of the whole world but also covering and discovering the whole
unmanned aerial vehicle, which can make takeoffs and landings universe.
vertically at precise locations. In start, tail-less configurations were Unmanned aerial vehicle is such an advancement that adds a glory
preferred to reduce the weight and structure complexities. The to the modern era aircraft industry. Unmanned aerial vehicle is
complete methodology included the vertical takeoff and landing
such an aircraft that is operated and controlled by onboard
aircraft wing, from start to final design and manufacturing, covered
all the individual stages of prototyping and design of the model made
computers and a ground-based controller system. No human pilot is
on CREO and then analysis performed on ANSYS. Airfoil for this required to operate this aerial vehicle. During the recent years,
design configuration was selected by reviewing literature on tail-less unmanned aerial vehicles have achieved so much attention because
fixed planes and MH-60. The propulsion system of the plane was of its usage in different civil tasks including surveillance, search
designed, there were two brushless motors for forward flight, three for and rescue and inspections of structures. Generally, there are 3
vertical takeoff and landing and out of which two were common designs for plane’s: aerostats, fixed wing aircraft and rotorcrafts.
because their axis changes when shifted to forward flight. Servo Each type of planes has its own advantages that predispose it to
motors were chosen by calculating the torque required to rotate the perform particular operations. Many fixed wing type aircrafts like
control surfaces and for two motors to change the axis. Preferred
RQ-5 Hunter, RQ-4 Global Hawk and RQ-2 Pioneer have upper
material was thermocol due to its light weight, ease of manufacturing
and low cost. Thermocol was reinforced with carbon rods and coated hand in flight duration[2] and the area of operational activities but
with glass fiber to get the required strength. Different manufacturing their drawback includes the need of runway for take-off and
techniques for airfoil cutting like CNC machine, 3D printer, manual landing.
machining and wood saw cutting were considered and based on their But there are some issues related to unmanned aerial vehicles, it
availability at PIEAS according to design dimensions, wood saw requires a proper runway to take-off and land and these types are
cutting was used. Design and results of all the analysis led to the not appropriate for operating effectively in limited airspace.
successful completion of this project. Normal planes face these problems in urban areas where there is
not a proper arrangement of runway for take-off and landing of
I. Introduction planes. Therefore, there exist a need to solve this problem and
develop a solution and hence the idea of Vertical Take-off and
Aircraft technology has been evolving since 1903 when the Wright
Landing (VTOL) of unmanned aerial vehicle prevails in the minds
brothers invented their first successful manned aircraft. Afterwards
of the modern era’s engineers and technicians.
Lawrence Burst Sperry invented the first autopilot in 1914. The
Basic aerodynamics includes the basic terminologies that should be
aircraft technology is advancing so fast that until the 21 st century
100 percent clear before heading towards the design and analysis of
the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) were invented[1]. The
the plane. These terminologies include, basic definitions of forces
advancement in aircraft industry can be analysed by just peering at
incorporated on the aircraft, different parts of the aircrafts and the
the first invention in aircraft industry and the modern era
basic mathematical formulas to calculate lift, drag etc.
inventions. Nowadays the invention of airplanes, missiles, drones,
The four basic forces that are induced on any aircraft includes the
jet fighters,
following:
helicopters
and  Thrust
spaceships  Lift
have not
only  Drag
connected  Gravity

Figure I-1: Forces on an aircraft

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Aerodynamics of the aircraft includes the following three terms: claims that it is the world's first ultralight fixed-wing aircraft, all-
 Roll: Rotation of plane about its own axis along the body, electric, vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
In modern era, vertical take-off and landing have been discovered.
nose to tail is known as Roll.
Efforts are now made on how to make vertical take-off and landing
 Pitch: Rotation of plane about the axis along the wings of more energy efficient. They have a major use in surveillance,
inspection and specifically delivery purposes. vertical take-off and
plane, in takeoff and landing direction is known as Pitch. landing design is selected to make take-offs and landings at limited
 Yaw: Rotation of plane about the vertical axis of plane is spaces precisely and to make it autonomous in the future. The
fixed-wing design is selected to increase its endurance, flight range,
known as Yaw. and cruise speed. Further, it will be made energy efficient by
converting power sources to solar power by applying solar sheets
on its wings[5].
There are three designs for plane: aerostats, fixed wing aircraft and
rotorcrafts. Each type of plane has its own advantages that
predispose it to perform particular operations. Many fixed wing
type aircrafts like RQ-5 Hunter, RQ-4 Global Hawk and RQ-2
Pioneer have upper hand in flight duration and the area of
operational activities but their drawback includes the need of
runway for take-off and landing. The alternative to the drawbacks
of plane is vertical take-off and landing and these planes have
further two types tilt wing and tilt rotor both have some unique
characteristics and also have some cons on the basis of their
structure.
Research is going on, how to make planes light weight and
economical. Different materials have been tested in this regard. For
Figure I-2: Roll, pitch and yaw delivery purposes and to carry small payloads balsa wood and
thermo-pole materials are suggested. Because they are light weight
and have much better strength for carrying small payloads.

II. Literature Review

Aircraft that can take off and land vertically, without any runway is
regarded as the vertical take-off and landing aircraft. The idea of
inventing the first vertical take-off and landing aircraft dates back
to 1907, when the first helicopter was invented. The severe need of
vertical take-off and landing occurs after the World War-I, when
usual aircraft needs runway for take-off and landing, therefore,
troops have to reach the runways to get the weapons and arms and
the food for their lives. Although, helicopters were being invented
at that time but according to speed point of view helicopters are not
much efficient[4].
In addition to helicopters, many experiments were performed to
develop an aircraft that can take off and land vertically. From 1922
to 1925 a lot of experiments were performed in this regard and
finally engineers invented the horizontal rotor fixed wing aircraft. Figure II-3: Different type of VTOL's
Later on, the usage of vertical fans driven by engines was
investigated in the 1950s. In 1977, NASA has flown Bell XV-15 III. Design methodology
vertical take-off and landing craft. Attempts were made to develop
a vertical take-off and landing aircraft that can shift passengers The design of vertical take-off and landing, plane is started with
from one place to the other in 1960s. The Hawker Siddeley Inter- conceptual phase, as, this helped a lot to develop an understanding
City Vertical-Lift proposal had two rows of lifting fans on either of the mission requirements and our competency to cope with
side. However, none of these aircraft made it to production after them. Different possible solutions were taken into consideration
they were dismissed as too heavy and expensive to operate. In 2018 and after analysing their merits and demerits, best solutions were
Opener Aero demonstrated an electrically-powered fixed-wing selected according to best of our capabilities and within the given
vertical take-off and landing aircraft, the Blackfly, which they constraints.

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A. Project Requirements 7) Geometric Considerations
There are no particular geometric considerations. There is no fixed
According to the project problem statement, several conditions configuration, the only consideration is to make the vertical take-
must be met by vertical take-off and landing plane in terms of off and landing plane as cheap as possible economically and make
geometry structure, weight, payload, performance and propulsion it easy to manufacture.
system. These parameters help us to decide most of our design
requirements. The mission constraints and the requirements are 8) Structural Considerations
discussed below:
Structural considerations include light weight of the vertical take-
1) Payload Requirements off and landing plane, achieve maximum strength by using a
material which is not only light weight but also gives maximum
There is no particular payload is used in our vertical take-off and strength required, and the plane must carry the weight of the
landing plane. The only payload that has to be carried by the plane battery and other components during take-off, cruise and landing.
is the load of batteries and propellers.
9) Propulsion Considerations
2) Structural Requirements
Problem statement for propulsive system was to design an electric
The structure of vertical take-off and landing plane wing should be circuitry that can provide maximum thrust. The LiPo battery will
strong enough to clear the wing tip test in which aircraft is lifted at have to be used as payload. Therefore, the LiPo battery should also
one point at each wing tip to verify adequate wing strength. vertical be light weight.
take-off and landing plane’s CG must also be marked at its
exterior.
10) Flight Considerations
3) Geometric Requirements Flight considerations includes the following terms:
The geometric selection is based on cost effectiveness,
Air-foil Configuration
compactness in size and most importantly geometry must be light
in weight. There are different types of air-foils for tailless wings and each air-
foil has its specific application. MH-60 air-foil is selected
4) Cruise Requirements according to the requirements of the project and the characteristics
of the project. Since for all required considerations the properties of
During cruise or forward flight of the vertical take-off and landing MH-60 air-foil almost fulfills all the required considerations which
altitude has to be enough for the safe terrain clearance and low can be visualized from the table 3-1. The table 3-1 given below
sufficient to maintain the visual contact. shows the comparison of some of the properties required for
project and the properties of MH-60 profile which it contains[12].
5) Propulsion Requirements Criteria for selection were based on Lift/drag ratio, stability,
The vertical take-off and landing aircraft will be driven using an manufacturing feasibility and stall characteristics. Different graphs
electric propulsion system. All energy for take-off and landing generated using Air-foil Tools[6].
must come from the on-board propulsion battery pack. The vertical Keeping in mind the basic outlay that was established in conceptual
take-off and landing aircraft must be propeller driven and electric phase of design, we started work on preliminary design. This phase
powered with an unmodified over the-counter model electric of the project was given much more importance and took most of
motor. We may use multiple motors or propellers. All the motors the time because it requires deep study that was carried out, as it is
must be commercially available brushless motors. Commercially the foundation of design phase. Main parts were designed by
produced propellers/blades must be used for safety. However, we keeping in mind basic aerodynamics, stability, control
can modify the propeller diameter by clipping its tip and may paint characteristics and fabrication feasibility. Selection of Air-foil was
the blades to balance the propeller[11]. found on analysing the lift and stall characteristics of different air-
foils. Wing was designed so as to achieve high maximum lift
B. Design Considerations coefficient and good stability.
Design requirements have been discussed above. In this section
design considerations will be discussed in order to meet the design
requirements.

6) Payload Considerations
There is no particular payload requirement for the vertical take-off
and landing plane except the load of the batteries, servos.

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 the chord length of the airfoil was 400 mm so it was not possible to
manufacture the required airfoil on CNC milling. Then there were
two problems related to 3D printing process that were, the bed of
the 3D printer was of 200 mm length and the chord length of the
airfoil was of 400 mm so it was impossible to make a model of
airfoil on 3D printer. The second problem with 3D printer was that,
the material of the 3D printer had a melting point of 150-220
degrees Celsius. So, thermocol had to be cut using hot wire cutting
process where the temperature of hot wire was more than 250
degrees Celsius which could melt down the airfoil. The problem
with manual machining was that, the sharp corner at the trailing
Figure III-4: Analysis on XFLR-5 edge of the airfoil and the exact roundness at the leading edge of
the airfoil made it difficult to obtain via conventional machining
Different graphs generated using Air-foil Tools[6]. process
We have to move to wood workshop for manufacturing of the
profile of our air-foil. For this we printed 2D profile of the air-foil
on a paper according to desired dimensions. From this paper we
have cut our profile by pasting it against soft wood in wood
workshop. We have to do some filing on the air-foil in order to
generate the exact dimensions, so after cutting the air-foil filing is
done for finishing the profile geometry to get exact desired profile.
We have manufactured two profiles for Root and Tip of our wings
from soft wood as the root chord is larger than the tip chord of the
air-foil. Following figure illustrates the air-foil manufactured in the
wood workshop.

Figure IV-7: Root chord

Figure III-5: Glider ratio vs angle of attack Hot wire cutting

Hot wire cutting is a method used for cutting the material using a
wire which is heated via current or some other means. When the
wire gets heated to certain temperature it is used in cutting the
required material using two ends fixed and moving the wire within
in the material. The wire actually melts the desired portion of the
material to generate the required geometry of the product. The
cutting of the wing profile is illustrated via some diagrams below:
As, we are manufacturing our wing from thermo-pole sheet. For
cutting the required shape of our wing, we have used hot electric
Figure III-6: Wing dimensions wire cutting for manufacturing our wing as described above. Hot
wire cutting is an effective technique for cutting thermo-pole
IV. manufacturing material. In electric hot wire cutting a Nichrome wire is being used
as shown above in figure, this wire is connected to a power supply
As thermo-pole is selected as the main material from which wing from one end and other end is remained open when current is
will be manufactured so for the cutting of thermo-pole material it is supplied across wire it gets red hot within 4 to 7 seconds normally.
necessary to attach required air-foil of some solid material with the This hot wire can give the required shape to thermo-coal when
thermo-pole so that cutting of the thermo-pole could be made easy. passes through it. We have mounted the profiles of the aero foil on
Therefore, it is required to made a 2D model of air-foil and both sides of the thermo-pole sheet with small nails as shown in
manufacture the air-foil on the required machine. figure above. Then we have fixed one end of the nichrome wire at a
The problem for manufacturing the airfoil on CNC was that the bed point where line of root and tip chord’s both ends meet to get the
of the CNC machine in the university was of 300 mm length but exact shape of our wing being cut. Then we have connected one

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side of Nichrome wire with 12volt laptop charger and other end
with a small rod to guide it against profile and similarly a guide at
the other side of the profile to get the exact shape of the wing. By
supplying power to wire and guiding the wire against the mounted
profiles to both sides of the sheet it will cut the required shape of
the wing. So, we have cut the wings with this technique from
thermo-pole sheet.

Figure IV-8: Hot wire cutting

Wing Reinforcement
Figure IV-9: Wing profile after reinforcement
To give the wing a required strength we have to reinforce the
thermo-pole wings with carbon rods. But before reinforcing and
coating we have to do its filing with sand paper for giving it a
proper finished shape. We have used the 2 carbon rods of 5mm V. conclusion
diameter and 1m length in each wing to get the required strength.
To put these rods in the thermo-pole wing structure we have made As vertical takeoff and landing technology of plane does not
two slots of 5.0mm diameter and 5.0mm depth in our wing with require any runway for takeoff and landing. It is the hybrid form of
cutter and put the carbon rods on these slots and filled these slots both plane configurational and multi-propeller copters. The planar
around the rod with a mixture of epoxy and resin to fix these rods configurations have problems in landings and takeoffs as they need
in the structure. a specific runway and cannot make landings at a precise location
As thermo-coal is soft, so surface of the wing is very delicate so we etc. The problems with multi-propeller copters is their efficiency
have to make it hard and stiff to bear the normal crashes. and speed etc. As there is not any wing to provide lift so, it needs a
strong power system during all the flights. But our plane is the
Glass Fibre Reinforcement hybrid type in between both of these, it has a winged plane
configuration and it works in the same way as all the others planer
We have to coat the surface with something light and hard enough configurations of planes and it has two extra propellers to make it
to give it the required stiffness. We have coated the wing with glass able of doing the vertical takeoffs and landings at precise location
fibre cloth and mixture of epoxy and resin in 1:1 to give it a proper without any runway. Complete design of this plane is described and
strength and stiffness. We have cut the glass fibre cloth exactly in discussed above. There are different designs proposed for vertical
the shape of wing and furl the cloth on wing and coated the wing takeoff and landing structures, one of them is Tilt Wing concept,
with the paste of epoxy and resin and pasted it with the cutter blade where the transition between individual flight phases is gained by
on the wing to keep the proper finished surface of the wing after tilting the wings with fixed rotors but it is more susceptible to
coating. transverse winds. Another solution is Tilt Rotor in which multiple
We have kept the coated wing for 30 hours to dry the coating and rotors are mounted on rotating shafts.
fix the carbon rods in the structure. We mounted both parts of wing
to get the required wing structure. Following figure illustrates the In this project, a novel design configuration of hybrid form of
mechanism of wing reinforcement using carbon rods and glass conventional aircraft wing with three propellers, two on both sides
fibre cloth. of wing’s center and one at the rear side of the wing to cancel out
the effect of moment along the pitch was used. All the three
propellers will be used for takeoff and landing of plane while
during the forward flight only the two propellers used in wings will
be used by rotating them at 90 degrees while the third propeller at
the tail will be turned off using controller. Compared to the above-
mentioned designs of planes the proposed design has the advantage

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that for the forward flight the design has the ability to rotate the [10] R. Naldi and L. Marconi, “Robust control of transition maneuvers for a
class of V/STOL aircraft,” Automatica, vol. 49, no. 6, pp. 1693–1704,
rotors (propellers) instead of rotating the whole wing. 2013, doi: 10.1016/j.automatica.2013.03.006.
The main purpose of the project was to present the concept of [11] U. Hayat, M. Iqbal, and S. W. Khan, “Design and Fabrication of Solar
vertical takeoff and landing aircraft wing, from start to final design Powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Umar Hayat Mazhar Iqbal Shahid
and manufacturing, covering all the individual stages of Waqas Khan,” 2015.
prototyping and design of the model made on CREO and then [12] “MH 60 10.08% (mh60-il).” [Online]. Available:
performed analysis on ANSYS. In a case of hybrid vertical takeoff http://airfoiltools.com/airfoil/details?airfoil=mh60-il#polars. [Accessed:
and landing aircraft wing the complete flight is divided into three 25-Dec-2019].
stages, namely, vertical flight mode, transition mode and horizontal [13] “K. K. Nag Pvt. Ltd.: Thermocol.” [Online]. Available:
flight mode. As design and results of all the analysis were leading http://kknag.com/business-verticals/expanded-polystyrene/thermocol/.
[Accessed: 25-Dec-2019].
to the successful completion of this project but due to COVID-19
and limited time for final year students we cannot complete the [14] “Changzhou Dewo Motor Co.,Ltd.” [Online]. Available:
fabrication of this project and test our plane's flights. Before this http://www.dewochina.com/product_category/Brushless-DC-motor.html?
gclid=EAIaIQobChMIgrDG_arR5gIVheh3Ch1WkgF6EAAYASAAEgJO
situation almost 60% of the project was fabricated and things were 4vD_BwE. [Accessed: 25-Dec-2019].
going as planned but, unfortunately, we along with the whole world
have met with this unexpected situation. [15] M. D. Hua, T. Hamel, and C. Samson, Control of vertical takeoff and
landing vehicles with thrust-tilting augmentation, vol. 19, no. 3. IFAC,
2014.
VI. Acknowledgment
[16] U. Ozdemir et al., “Design of a commercial hybrid VTOL system,” J.
Intell. Robot. Syst. Theory Appl., vol. 74, no. 1–2, pp. 371–393, 2014, doi:
As this project has a panoptic knowledge of mechanical, we 10.1007/s10846-013-9900-0.
acknowledge the efforts of our supervisor, Mr. Mazhar Iqbal
Gondal, with his efforts and encouragement in guiding us about our
project. Moreover, his insightful criticism has helped us learn
tremendously. We would also like to acknowledge the help from
our batchmates, Muhammad Mubeen Javaid, Hammad Ali and
Hafiz Muhammad Awais Rafeeq regarding the technical aspect of
our final year project.

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Mechanical Department