High-Speed Drone Airframe Design

I’m developing a fixed-wing unmanned aircraft that must cruise comfortably above 200 knots with a 14 hp pusher prop engine. The finished platform will lift 30–35 kg at take-off, yet the bare airframe (clean fuselage and wings ) must not exceed 12–15 kg. High-speed stability is the single most important design driver. The layout also has to accommodate: • a surveillance-grade gimbal camera ahead of the CG, (approx size of bay is 200mm x 200mm) • Room for retractable undercarriage • an 8 L fuel tank near the wing box, and • a fully accessible avionics bay built around modular compartments so future sensors can be swapped in without re-cutting the structure. To reach the target drag numbers I will need a full aerodynamic package: CFD-level lofting, airfoil selection, lift-to-drag optimisation, and flutter margins for the 200 kt envelope. Please include AI-driven “wind-tunnel” testing or surrogate modelling so we can iterate virtually before we cut any moulds. Deliverables 1. 3-D CAD of fuselage, wing and empennage ready for manufacture (STEP + native file) 2. Aerodynamic report: lift/drag curves, pressure maps, stability derivatives, flutter check 3. AI-assisted virtual wind-tunnel dataset with training method documented 4. Weight breakdown and structural justification showing the 12–15 kg airframe target 5. Integration drawings for the gimbal, 8 L tank, and modular avionics bay 6. Brief build manual highlighting materials, lay-ups or machining specs 7. Concept rendering Acceptance criteria: predicted cruise ≥200 kt at 75 % power, CLmax > required for 45 m take-off run, and total drag within 10 % of the CFD estimate across the operating envelope. Toolchain is flexible— SolidWorks is preferrable, ANSYS Fluent, STAR-CCM+, OpenFOAM, XFLR5, or similar are all fine as long as the mesh settings and solver assumptions are transparent. If you leverage Python or MATLAB for the AI component, please include scripts so I can rerun the model. Let me know your typical turnaround for the first set of aero plots and any past examples of high-speed UAV work.

Project ID: 40614088