Derivation of a Wing-Weight Estimation Equation for a Roadable Personal Air Vehicle Using Regression Analyses of Data Obtained from Wing Planform Reference Points
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 34, Issue 1
Abstract
Estimating the wing weights of personal air vehicles (PAVs) is limited by lack of comparable data, as there were no PAV data available to the public. In this study, the limits were confirmed by verifying estimation equations published in the literature. Research was then conducted to derive an equation to estimate PAV wing weight to overcome such limits. To address difficulties which arose during the data collection process, research was conducted on the derivation of a PAV wing-weight estimation equation that could be used in the initial design stage, based on single-engine turbo-propeller aircraft with specifications similar to those of PAVs. The estimation equation was derived using a regression analysis. Typically, data estimation models created with statistical methods frequently result in the overfitting phenomenon, in which the model cannot properly respond to actual data. To address this problem, the model creation and evaluation steps were performed using the K-fold cross-validation method, which was made into a program using Microsoft Excel version 2016 Visual Basics for Application (VBA). The final model was verified using actual data not used in the estimation model creation process. The variations in the final model were examined using a Monte-Carlo simulation. A final equation was derived that also considered the weight increase caused by the installation of a folding mechanism.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government [Ministry of Science and Information/Communication/Technology (MSIT)] (No. 2019R1F1A1042533) and by the Research Grant from the Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement funded by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of the Korean Government (Project No.: 20CTAP-C157731-01).
References
ASTM. 2007. “Committee F37 on light sport aircraft. West Conshohocken, PA: ASTM.
Brandt, S. A., and F. T. Gilliam. 1995. “Design analysis methodology for solar-powered aircraft.” J. Aircr. 32 (4): 703–709. https://doi.org/10.2514/3.46780.
Cambone, S. A., K. J. Krieg, P. Pace, and L. Wells, II. 2005. Unmanned aircraft systems roadmap 2005–2030. Washington, DC: US Dept. of Defense.
Cawley, G. C., and N. L. C. Talbot. 2007. “Preventing over-fitting during model selection via Bayesian regularisation of the hyper-parameters.” J. Mach. Learn. Res. 8 (Apr): 841–861.
Chung, P. H., D. M. Ma, and J. K. Shiau. 2019. “Design, manufacturing, and flight testing of an experimental flying wing UAV.” Appl. Sci. 9 (15): 3043. https://doi.org/10.3390/app9153043.
Gokcin, C., E. Mathias, and N. M. Dimitri. 2016. “A methodology for sizing and analysis of electric propulsion subsystems for unmanned aerial vehicles.” In Proc., 54th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting. Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2016-0216.
Gudmundsson, S. 2014. General aviation aircraft design applied method and procedures. Waltham, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Hassanalian, M., and A. Abdelkefi. 2016. “Methodologies for weight estimation of fixed and flapping wing micro air vehicles.” Meccanica 52 (9): 2047–2068. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11012-016-0568-y.
Hastie, T., R. Tibshirani, and J. Friedman. 2009. The element of statistical learning data mining, inference, and prediction. New York: Springer.
Joo, H., and H. Hwang. 2017. “Surrogate aerodynamic model for initial sizing of solar high-altitude long-endurance UAV.” J. Aerosp. Eng. 30 (6): 04017064. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)AS.1943-5525.0000777.
Lee, D. O. J., T. Park, J. Park, and J. Kwon. 1998. “The weight estimation method of single turbo-prop aircraft.” [In Korean.] J. Korean Soc. Aeronaut. Space Sci. 26 (6): 143–150.
Lim, D., C. Justin, and D. Mavris. 2015. “Advanced general aviation concept study for a roadable aircraft.” In Proc., 15th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conf. Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Montgomery, D. C., E. A. Peck, and G. Feoffrey Vining. 2001. Introduction to linear regression analysis. 3rd ed. New York: Wiley.
Moore, M. 2006. NASA personal air transportation technologies. Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Raymer, D. P. 2018. Aircraft design: A conceptual approach. 6th ed. Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Roskam, J. 2018. Airplane design part V: Component weight estimation. 5th ed. Lawrence, KS: DARcorporation.
Shin, K., H. Hwang, and J. Ahn. 2018. “Mission analysis of solar UAV for high-altitude long-endurance flight.” J. Aerosp. Eng. 31 (3): 04018010. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)AS.1943-5525.0000832.
Sting S4. 2011. “TL-2000 sting S4 pilot’s operating handbook.” Accessed October 10, 2020. http://www.sting.aero/owners/downloads/manuals/s4/poh_s4_lsa_kts.pdf.
Stone, M. 1974. “Cross-validatory choice and assessment of statistical predictions.” J. R. Stat. Soc. 36 (2): 111–147.
Torenbeek, E. 1982. Synthesis of subsonic airplane design. 1st ed. Delft, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
UIUC (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) Airfoil Coordinates Database. 2019. “UIUC airfoil coordinates database.” Accessed August 6, 2019. https://m-selig.ae.illinois.edu/ads/coord_database.html.
Wiegand, B. P. 1992. “The basic algorithms of mass properties analysis and control.” In Proc., 51st Annual Conf. Hartford, CT: Society of Allied Weight Engineers.
Yarygina, M. V., and Y. I. Popov. 2012. “Development of the weight formula for a folding wing.” Russ. Aeronaut. 55 (2): 120–126. https://doi.org/10.3103/S106879981202002X.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 34 • Issue 1 • January 2021
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 17, 2019
Accepted: Aug 7, 2020
Published online: Oct 15, 2020
Published in print: Jan 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Mar 15, 2021
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.