Increasing Launch Capability of a UAV Bungee Catapult

 

Zoran Novaković

Nikola Medar

Lidija Mitrović

 

In this paper, a concept of a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) bungee catapult is analyzed by introducing an appropriate combination of elastic and non elastic cords which significantly increases efficiency (by decreasing of power losses) compared to a widely spread concept of a bungee catapult with elastic cords only. This enables installing a few times greater number of elastic bungee cords into the same modular space in the bungee catapult. The concept of elastic and non elastic cords gives the bungee catapult a possibility to hand over to a UAV more than twice greater launch energy in relation to the concept of elastic cords only. Also, in the paper, a mathematical model of a UAV new bungee catapult with elastic and non elastic cords is given, as well as the analysis comparing the energy losses of both concepts.

Key words: UAV, launching, launching device, catapult, design, mathematical model.