Journal of Transport System Engineering 7:2 (2020) 53

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF HEXACOPTER FOR

HEAVY PAYLOAD

Abdul Hakim, Kamarulafizam Ismail* , Fazila Mohd Zawawi Article history

Received
School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering 9 September 2020
Received in revised form
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
9 December 2020
81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor,
Accepted
Malaysia 9 December 2020
Published
15 December 2020

*Corresponding author
[email protected]

ABSTRACT for 1mm and 2mm aluminium frame thickness

which are 17.63MPa and 13.77MPa respectively.
This work presents a methodology of design for The displacement value for 1mm and 2mm
heavy lifting hexacopter drones. The problem of thickness which are 0.73mm and 0.40mm
such a drone is to overcome the stability of the respectively on the arm attached to the hexagonal
structure and the blade design for the drone. The hub. As for the newly designed blade, the thrust
main objective for this work is to design and test indicated the ability to achieve a maximum of
analyze a heavy-lifting hexacopter drone structure 3.4kg at 1500RPM using 105KV motor.
and to measure thrust produced by the newly
designed blade. Design and analysis were
conducted using SOLIDWORKS, in simulating the KEYWORDS
stress and displacement of a proposed structure of
the hexacopter drone. The load applied on the hexacopter, heavy-lift payload, counter-rotating,
structure is 350N which includes the 20kg of the tri-blade
payload and 10kg of the total weight of the drone.
The maximum stresses (Von Mises) are obtained

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) commonly known as a drone is an aircraft that

flieswithout a pilot. Usually, UAV or drone consist of two main parts which are a
drone and a ground- based controller unit. Basically, the fundamental of the UAV is
based on the idea or invention of the tesla called ‘teleautomaton’ during 1898 which
is the first ever remote control of an automated system as to solving the complex
problem of control and feedback application (Vukobratovic, 2007). Then, the
wireless transmission technology rapidly grew for the use of military purposes. The
flight of the UAV normally operates in various degrees of autonomy such as under
remote control by human or autonomously on-board computer. When it is remotely
controlled from ground it is called RPV (Remotely Piloted Vehicle) and requires
reliable wireless communication for control.
UAV usually build up from composite material and very light such as carbon
fiber, plastics and aluminium for their frame which can increase the maneuverability,
long endurance of flight time and can fly at high altitude. The frame must be light

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 Journal of Transport System Engineering 7:2 (2020) 54

but strong enough to withstand the downward thrust produced by the motor and the
weight on the frame such as batteries, speed controller and motors. If the frame of
the drone is strong but heavy, the propellers must spin faster in order to generate
more lifting thrust to allow the drone to stay hover in the air. The power drained
from the batteries by the motors becomes high and more energy is wasted.
Therefore, the higher the payload or weight, the lower the battery's life.

2.0 DESIGN OVERVIEW

2.1 Structure of Heavy-Lifting Drone

The structure of the drone must be lightweight but strong and rigid enough to take all
the stresses due to the forces produced by the propeller and the payload during the
flight. The design of the drone is considering the mechanical properties of the
material and mechanics of material engineering knowledge to make sure the drone
body structure can take all the stresses safely.

Figure 1 Tilt-wing design(Vestlund&Brynolf, n.d.)

Tilt wing UAV design (figure 1) is able to shorten the vertical flight time and at the
same time it can glide while in flight. Thus, the gliding can increase the time of
flight and the range drastically. The material used in this thesis comes from a
company which produces high-strength carbon fiber tubes and rods as well as a 3k
twill weave carbon fiber prepreg for the skin, making the structure as light and
strong as possible. The total weight of the UAV is 56.6 kg which is able to carry
payload at 495 kg and can perform safe glide flight. (Vestlund&Brynolf, n.d.).

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 Journal of Transport System Engineering 7:2 (2020) 55

2.2 Power System for UAV

Lithium-ion battery technology was developed in early1990's and enabled the

portable electronics revolution. The electrical vehicles (EV) and grid storage are
now adapting the lithium ion battery technology because of the rapid
improvement of the lithium battery as the alternative power source today is much
better. For premium application and high-performance application, lithium-ion
battery technology is most suitable compare to conventional lead-acid battery
technology for its higher energy density which offers longer range and endurance,
other than its lightweight and super-fast charging rate. (Chipade, Abhishek,
Kothari, & Chaudhari, 2018). Most of the portable devices today widely use the
lithium ion battery as they are small and lightweight but can provide a large of
power capacity, plus they also are rechargeable.

Figure 2 Panasonic NCR-18650GA Lithium Ion Cell.

The most common batteries are the lithium ion cell base (Figure 2) and each cell
can provide 3.7V, the capacity of 3500 mAh with 10A maximum continuous
discharging current output. This type of battery is widely used in Electric
Vehicles.

2.3 Propulsion Design of Heavy-Lifting Drone

Figure 3 Basic multirotor platform configurations. (Anweiler, 2017).

Multicopter platform prototype for environmental monitoring.

In this paper, HEX 6 X configuration is used for heavy lifting drone design by
placing each arm with only one motor. This configuration is suitable for a single
rotating propulsion system comparedto a contra-rotating propulsion system which
is placing two motors on each arm. The rotation for each motor is alternated with
clockwise and anticlockwise in order to eliminate the effect of the angular
 Journal of Transport System Engineering 7:2 (2020) 56

momentum produced from each of the motors. In HEX 6 X configuration (figure

3), the drone has 6 Degree of Freedom (DoF), where all of the 6 degrees of
freedom are affected by rotational motion produced by the propeller (fixed-pitch).
All six motors have different speeds in order to yaw, pitch, and roll except only
for vertical hovering or during take-off.

3.1 DESIGN PROCESS AND METHODS

This section briefly explains the method that was adopted towards the design of the
optimum heavy-lifting drone.

3.2 Second Moment of Area

The Second Moment of Area or Moment of Inertia about a given axis is the sum
product of the area and the square of the distance from the centroid to the axis.

The second moment of area or moment of inertia (I) is determined using the
following mathematical expression:
𝑛
(1)
𝐼𝑥𝑥 = 𝐼𝑖 + 𝐴𝑦 2
𝑖=1

The second moment of area (𝐼𝑥𝑥) is an important figure that is used to

determine the stress in a section, to calculate the resistance to buckling, and to
determine the amount of deflection in a beam.

3.3 Drone arm

The arm of the drone is designed using Aluminium 6061-T6 Grade as the material
is light and sufficiently strong to withstand the load applied. The aluminium arm
is designed with length of 0.75m long with the thickness of 2 mm as shown in
Figure 4. The length of the drone arm is designedaccording to tip to tip clearance
of the blade and the angle of 60 degree for a total of six arms. The arrangement of
the drone arms is 2 inches by 1 inch to obtain a larger second moment of area
which reduce the bending moment of the arm.

Figure 4 Drone Arm CAD Design

3.4 Rankine–Froude Theory

The propeller is designed for optimal flight endurance in both climbing and
 Journal of Transport System Engineering 7:2 (2020) 57

hovering modes of the drone. The design of the propeller for this research is based
on the momentum theory which is well known as Rankine–Froude Theory. The
propeller is modelled as the film thickness disk which is inducing a constant
velocity along the axis of rotation. The drone is basically using the same concept
with the helicopter which is hovering. This disc creates a flow around the rotor.
Fluid relatedmathematicalmodels were used to govern the equations that
connectbetween power, radius of the rotor, torque and induced velocity.

The Bernoulli Equation can be applied to the particles passed across the propeller.

Figure 5 Diagram of air particle passing through propeller by the RC drone

hub

As the Bernoulli Equation is applied between (1) to (2), the induced velocity of
the air passed through the propeller can be obtained.

(2)
𝑇
𝑉2 =
2𝜌𝐴

According to Rankine–Froude Theory, the thrust and power can be calculated

through the induced velocity produced by the propeller, these two parameters are
required to fly the drone. It is general analysis that links velocity of the air flow
before and after the propeller to obtain thrust and power.

𝑇 = 2𝜋𝑅2 𝜌𝑎𝑖𝑟 𝑉 2 (3)

Induced power is defined as the ideal power required to produce a thrust:

𝑃𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑙 = 𝑇𝑉 (4)

The efficiency of the propeller or the Figure of Merit (FM) is a ratio between ideal
power and mechanical power (actual power) consumed by the propeller during
hovering:
 Journal of Transport System Engineering 7:2 (2020) 58

𝑃𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑇𝑉 (5)
𝐹𝑀 = =
𝑃𝑚𝑒𝑐 ℎ 𝑃𝑚𝑒𝑐 ℎ

𝐹𝑀is range from 0 to 1, it is impossible to obtain 1 with the ideal propeller which
is mean no losses. Generally, the propeller does not exceed 0.9 but all propellers
are designed as close as possible to 0.9 of Figure of Merit in order to minimize
losses and to maximize the power used for endurance.

Figure 6 Blade Design Profile

The design of the blade profile was obtained from previous works of lecturer
which produce through MATLAB coding as shown in Figure 6. The MATLAB-
based blade design program uses the Blade Element Momentum Theory (BEMT)
which requires important input parameters such as speed, diameter, angle of attack
etc.

4.0 RESULTS

This section discusses the result analysis of aerodynamic performance in terms of

thrust variations as well as the structural analysis in designing the optimum heavy-
lifting drone.

4.1 Structure Design and Analysis

The structure of the heavy-lifting hexacopter frame consists of aluminum T-6061

material for its strength, machining ability and lightweight characteristics. A static
loading analysis is done by using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) through
SOLIDWORKS. The motor mount plates are fixed as rigid points (green arrow)
and the hub of the drone is applied with 350 N of the load (purple arrow) as
shown in Figure 7. The loading is considering the weight of the payload which is
250 N and the weight of the drone structure of 100 N.
 Journal of Transport System Engineering 7:2 (2020) 59

Figure 7 Applied Load on the structure.

Figure 8 Stress Contour for 1 mm thickness arm

Figure 9 Displacement contour of 1 mm thickness arm.

FEA in Figure 9 indicated the value of stress and displacement of the structure.
The structure of the Hexacopter is made of Aluminium 6061-T6 as designed in
Figure 7. The properties of the Aluminium 6061-T6 is as shown in Table 1. The
yield strength of the material is about 275 MPa. Then, Maximum von mises stress
value obtained for 1mm and 2 mm thickness which are 17.63 MPa and 13.77MPa
respectively. The displacement value for 1mm and 2mm thickness which are 0.73
mm and 0.40 mm respectively on the arm attached to the hexagonal hub. Thus, the
 Journal of Transport System Engineering 7:2 (2020) 60

structure is concluded as safe for flight with designed payload. The large
difference of the maximum stress created by the loading of 350 N compared to the
yield strength of the material proves that Aluminium 6061-T6 can be used safely.
The stress and displacement can be seen in the color contour that there is no red
region on the structure which indicates maximum stress and stress concentration
point.

4.2 Thrust Test

A blade thrust test bench was developed using 10Kg rated load cells and
calibrated using APC 9-inch blade. The data from the test rig is obtained and
plotted show the trend of the blade performance according to the designed speed
and thrust as shown in Table 1 and Figure 10: -

Table 1 Blade Performance Parameters

Speed Thrust Current
(RPM) (g) (A)
209 131 0
408 285 0.23
629 627 0.99
811 1110 2.2
1003 2229 4.2
1200 2880 7.9
1458 3400 15

Figure 10 Speed (rpm) - Thrust (g) result

The blade is designed to produce approximately 10 kg of thrust at the designed
speed of 3000 rpm. In Figure 10, the maximum speed achieved is 1500rpm using
6S LiPo batteries and the maximum thrust is 3.4 kg. Although the data of the
blade performance does not achieve 10 kg of thrust at 3000 rpm, the trend of the
plotted graph projected that the blade performance is according to the designed
speed and thrust.

The balancing of the blade is off due to difference weight ranging from 2 grams to
4 grams each of the blade. This imbalance blade causes the rotor to vibrate during
 Journal of Transport System Engineering 7:2 (2020) 61

the test and the reading of the load cell is fluctuating. The hub rotor also is not
perfectly concentric with the motors causing the rotor start wobbling during the
high rpm testing. These problems lead to huge thrust loss during the test and can
cause damage to the motor if the test is continued with the higher speed of
rotation.
The voltage drops across ESC from 24 V to only 16.5 V had caused the motor to
spin slower than expected which is 2520 rpm. In order to obtain the designed
speed, 12S LiPo batteryis recommended which will give approximately 45 V. The
motor needs about 29 V of power supply in order to achieve 3000 rpm and only
then the thrust measurement of 3,000 rpm rotor can be performed.

5.0 CONCLUSION

A design and development of the hexacopter drone for heavy lifting payload with
specifically designed blades was presented. The thrust gain from a single rotor is
3.4 kg of thrust. The hexacopter drone with6 rotors in total will give the maximum
lifting capability at 1500 rpm is 20.4 kg including the weight of the drone. The
lifting capability can be increased as the power source provided at 29 V to achieve
the designed speed 3000 rpm and thrust 10 kg for each rotor which give the total
of 60 kg of thrust.

Acknowledgement
This research was funded by a grant from the Ministry of Higher Education of
Malaysia (GUP UTMTDR Grant Q.J130000.3551.06G08).

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