The Design and Development of a Light-Weight, High-Speed, Diesel Engine for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

In the past years military tacticians have identified the need for virtually all vehicles to utilize similar fuels (namely kerosene). While this has not been a problem for more conventional vehicles that typically utilize diesel and turbine engines, the challenge has been extreme for light-weight unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) engines. This class of vehicles has previously used two-stroke gasoline engines for their high specific output, small frontal area, and low mission weight.

The contents of this paper highlights the design and development efforts of Schrick GmbH in the introduction of a special application engine for UAV's. The paper also discusses the technical challenges that had to be met to achieve specific power, weight, packaging, fuel consumption, and durability targets. This diesel is unique in that it has a total weight of 24kg while achieving 34 kW output. Areas of interest are unique construction techniques, advanced material usage, component integration, dynamic component design, advanced engine modeling, and optimization of light-weight engine components.