F-UAV consists of several unique features that allow it to stand out among other similar products. F-UAV platform is designed to fulfill a number of requirements, including; ease in assembling/disassembling, being able to fit in an airline cabin bag, carry an air quality measurement sensor and be an efficient and creative solution. To achieve these goals, a number of mechanisms have been designed, developed and tested to achieve the most optimal results. These mechanisms include: 

Air Mixing Chamber - Alessandro

The CO sensor we use for air quality measurements is an electrochemical sensor. These kind of sensors require a certain amount of time to detect the gas, from 0.5 seconds up to 3 seconds for small concentrations, and they require a turbulent flow parallel to the membrane . Therefore, it is not possible to just place the sensor with the sensitive surface outside of the aircraft. At the same time, if the sensor is placed inside, an effective way to have air from outside over the membrane must be found.

In order to solve the problem and to guarantee the desired flow over the sensor an air mixing chamber was designed.

The sensor chamber is made of two main parts: the air intake and the air mixing chamber. The air intake is placed outside the fuselage and it collects the air at cruise speed. In the mixing chamber the velocity is decreased and a recirculating vortex is created over the sensor, in this way it has the time to detect the gas before the flow goes away through the exit duct. Changing the mixing chamber volume allow to have a specific recirculation time and thus to measure the concentration with the desired sample rate. The pieces were made using 3D printing.


Avionics Switch -  Mobin and  Alessandro


The sensor requires certain amount of time to stabilize once it is connected to the circuit. The battery consumption is much faster when the sensor is connected in series with the avionics components. Moreover, connecting the avionics after the sensor is calibrated would take much longer.

This can be avoided by creating a parallel circuitry that splits into two sections:

  1. One where the battery is connected directly to the sensor
  2. Other connected to the avionics system

This is done by means of high amp toggle switch. This switch circuitry helps in assembly time as the avionics system is switched off while the sensor stabilizes and can be turned on prior to flight check to reserve the battery power.


Wing reinforcement

Carbon fiber strips are placed vertically at ¼ and ¾ of the wings chord length, running all the way from the wing root to the wing tip. This evenly spreads out the load on the whole wing, hence providing it with rigidity and structural support. 

Wing attachment - Yusuf Iqbal
Paired with the wing reinforcement carbon fiber strips, another mechanism is used. This makes use of carbon fiber tubes which are the same diameter as the width of the strips used for reinforcement. This allows the strips to tightly fit inside the tubes with slight bit of filing down. The mechanism is used at all attachment points on each small part of the wing as the wing has been divided into 4 small parts all of which can be plugged into each other to make a complete 1.5 m wing.


Boom Connection - Yusuf Iqbal

The connections between tail boom/fuselage and tail boom/tail of aircraft are the same in principle. This involves the square section boom entering through a square hole and stopping at a circular hole where a screw extrudes outwards of the boom tips on both side and are screwed from the other side of the circular holes with the help of nuts.


Tail reinforcement - Lucía Muñoz Córdoba
Utilizing the same principle used for wing reinforcement, the tail has also been given vertical strips at ¼ and ¾ chord length of tail airfoil. The difference between the wing and the tail reinforcement is that we use birch plywood strips for the tail. This allows us to extend the strips out of the tail airfoil and use them as the connection between the tail and the carbon fiber tail boom. To do this, both the strips at ¼ and ¾ chord length in the rudder are extruded, two holes are made out of which the first one is square and the second one is circular. The square section tail boom enters the square side and stops at the circular side where a screw is used to lock it in place.