A survey of free software for the design, analysis, modelling, and simulation of an unmanned aerial vehicle

The objective of this paper is to analyze free software for the design, analysis, modelling, and simulation of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Free software is the best choice when the reduction of production costs is necessary; nevertheless, the quality of free software may vary. This paper probably does not include all of the free software, but tries to describe or mention at least the most interesting programs. The first part of this paper summarizes the essential knowledge about UAVs, including the fundamentals of flight mechanics and aerodynamics, and the structure of a UAV system. The second section generally explains the modelling and simulation of a UAV. In the main section, more than 50 free programs for the design, analysis, modelling, and simulation of a UAV are described. Although the selection of the free software has been focused on small subsonic UAVs, the software can also be used for other categories of aircraft in some cases; e.g. for MAVs and large gliders. The applications with an historical importance are also included. Finally, the results of the analysis are evaluated and discussed—a block diagram of the free software is presented, possible connections between the programs are outlined, and future improvements of the free software are suggested. © 2015, CIMNE, Barcelona, Spain.Internal Grant Agency of Tomas Bata University in Zlin [IGA/FAI/2015/001, IGA/FAI/2014/006

A new energy conservation scheme for the numeric study of the heat transfer in profile extrusion calibration

In this work, a new second-order conservative finite volume scheme using the cell-to-vertex interpolation is proposed to solve the heat transfer problem involving discontinuous solution and discontinuous materials properties. We apply the method to a thermoplastic extrusion process where a dry calibration is used to cool down a polymer tape. One of the major difficulties in the modelling is to prescribe the adequate value for the heat transfer coefficient between the polymer and the calibrator. To this end, we define an optimization procedure coupled with the new finite volume method to evaluate the heat transfer coefficient at the polymer-calibrator interface from experimental data.This research was financed by FEDER Funds through Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade - COMPETE and by Portuguese Funds through FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, within the Projects PEst-OE/MAT/UI0013/2014, PTDC/MAT/121185/2010, and UID/CTM/50025/2013. The second author was also financed by project FCT-ANR/MAT-NAN/0122/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio