8.11. Design optimization and exploration of a multirotor drone (ISAE)

Written by Marc Budinger (INSA Toulouse), Toulouse, France.

The purpose of this document is to implement the overall design code for your drone concept in order to quickly optimize various specifications and architectures.

8.11.1. Instructions for the sizing code

Here are a few tips to facilitate your group work and the IT implementation of your code:

• Analyze all of your previous component sizing work (propeller, motor, ESC, battery, structure) together, focusing particularly on the optimization vairables and the variables to be exchanged.

• Represent the complete calculation structure using an N2 diagram or an XDSM diagram. Propose a set of functions that minimize the variables to be exchanged.

Lambe, A. B., & Martins, J. R. (2012). Extensions to the design structure matrix for the description of multidisciplinary design, analysis, and optimization processes. Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, 46(2), 273-284. Link

• Complete your previous notebooks with these functions. To streamline this notebook, you can use the “magic” functions %writefile and %run to save a function from a notebook (for example, previous work notebooks dedicated to each part of the drone).

%writefile my_function.py   def my_function(x, y):       return x + y

%run my_function.py

Nota: The appendices to this project contain: a summary of the equations used to design a conventional multi-rotor drone, an example of optimization code (with the results in dataframes), and an example of a diagram display.