JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #95 - Special JEC Europe - March 2015 - 50

awards

official partner

Rugged amphibious tri-copter/quad configurable UAV drone
This project covers the first fully autonomous and amphibious, IP-67, man-portable
vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL)
tri-copter. This rugged design is capable
of performing in all weather conditions.
All fuselage components can be rapidly
customized to support the most demanding
customer needs and requirements. The
entire aircraft fuselage is moulded entirely
from Quantum Composites quasi-isotropic
carbon fibre and glass materials in fewer
than 10 minutes. All parts are formed within
matched metal moulds in high-speed vertical hydraulic presses. Currently, this is one
of the fastest methods for manufacturing a
UAV of this type.
No other UAV of its kind is manufactured in
a faster process from engineered structural
composites. Extensive work was done with
Quantum Composites to bring to life this
rugged VTOL tri-copter UAV for tactical/
mission-critical and harsh environment

applications. The UAV was strategically designed to be waterproof and rugged so that it
does not require a transit case. To accomplish these attributes, many material science
challenges were solved along the way,
which resulted in many new highly valuable
patent-pending construction methods that
made it possible to reduce the part counts by
combining many more features into a single
composite part. An example of this effort
can be seen in the upper fuselage/combined
tail construction, which has only five main
components all bonded together into one
single monocoque, in contrast to sometimes
hundreds of parts.
In three months, Rapid Composites was
able to go from a sketch to a fully functional
flying prototype. The goal was to develop
an unrivalled tri-copter UAV utilizing only a
small team of designers, engineers and experienced material science experts on a tight
budget and timeline. Industrial designers

Composite antenna embedded into
a motorhome roof for television reception
Composite materials still possess a large
development potential that can be tapped
into by enhancing their multifunctionality.
This multifunctionality can be achieved
through a relevant selection of their basic
components (fibre, resin, matrix, filler, etc.),
but also through the arrangement of these
basic components into the composite panels
themselves. At the same time, the environment is becoming increasingly communicative, especially in the field of transportation:
cars, buses, trucks, ships, aircraft, etc.
This innovation was developed within the
framework of a FUI collaborative project
entitled SAMCOM (Systèmes Antennaires
en Matériaux COMposites). It was built
with a dual aim: offering an innovative
antenna concept entirely made of composite materials, and embedding the antenna
inside a vehicle body panel using conventional processes such as infusion or prepreg
curing. This new communication techno-

Winner: Rapid Composites (USA)
Partner: Quantum Composites (USA)

were tasked to identify voids within the
VTOL UAS/UAV market, with the objective to exploit them by capturing a foothold
with new technologies never seen before in
this emerging marketplace. Rapid Composites wanted a product that could be slung
with a rifle strap, required no transit case, no
assembly, had unrivalled versatility, could
perform amphibious take-off and landing,
was capable of carrying a 7-kg maximum
payload of anything and could fly for more
than 30 minutes.

Telecommunications

logy enables composite panels to communicate directly with their radiofrequency
environment (smart composite structures)
without the need for external antennas. The
fundamental idea of this innovation is to
manufacture all the DTT (Digital Terrestrial
Television) antenna parts entirely from composite materials, including the conductive
components for the radiating and reflector
parts. To this end, many carbon or hybrid
reinforcements were characterized. The first
step in the design of a carbon-fibre composite antenna was to determine the electrical
properties of the selected carbon-fibre fabric.
Secondly, the DTT composite antenna (flat
Yagi topology) was designed using numerical simulation. The manufacturing process
is currently being optimized to improve the
Technology Readiness Level (TRL) and the
Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL) of
such products. Strong contacts have already
been established with automotive suppliers

50 jec composites magazine / No95 March 2015

UAV

Winner: DCNS (France)
Partner(s): Université De Rennes 1
(France), Plastima Composites (France),
Thales Communication & Security
(France), Cemcat (France)

to market the future communicating composite panels. The application developed
and tested here is the roof of a motorhome
for DTT reception. This 100%-composite
antenna needs to be omnidirectional to
enable the motorhome passengers to watch
TV without any manual tuning or adjustment, whether the motorhome is in motion
or stationary.

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #95 - Special JEC Europe - March 2015

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