Preliminary design of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAV with steerable vertical thrust effect

This paper presents the preliminary design of an aerial vehicle testbed based on the GFS-UAV implementation, namely the “CoandaJLTCraft”. The modified GFS-UAV design uses the Coanda principle to provide lift with enough Vertical Thrust (VT) generated by the Coanda flow. The lift coefficient of the Coanda profile is investigated in our laboratory. A novel steerable design is introduced. This novel design provides an alternative for directional controls and for enhancing the flight stability. Our experiment shows that the steerable configuration is valid up to 10 m/s of Coanda surface flow speed for indoor applications.