The Design of Fuel Systems for Medium Altitude Long Endurance (Male) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

The research work is aimed at designing the fuel system for a medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicle. Empirical values were adopted and evaluated to ascertain if the allotted values provided will meet up the required endurance provided in the specification. On evaluating, it was observed that the allotted fuel weight will only provide about 23 hours endurance, and this is below the customers’ specification. In that regards, further work was carried out to vary the weight of fuel to achieve the costumers’ request of 25 hours endurance. However, the MTOW has to be traded off as a result of increase in the fuel weight. In addition, Reynolds number was also evaluated and the result obtained justifies that the fuel flow in laminar even though the flow is very slow. Therefore, to correct this sluggishness and flow cavitation as well as vapor lock, electric driven pump was incorporated along the pipe installation and  a pressure relief valves. Finally, Arduino code was obtained from electronic Hub and adjusted to suit the aircraft indication system. The code was compiled and during the experiment the fluid was varied at Low, Average and Full. Furthermore, CATIA software was employed to carry out the initial and detailed design in conformity to the system architecture.