"Diploma as a Startup": INRTU alumni Nikita Petrov has developed a methodology for designing drones
Nikita Petrov, a graduate thesis student of the School of Aircraft Construction, Mechanical Engineering and Transport at INRTU, successfully presented a startup on the design of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Pavel Chimitov, associate professor of the Department of Aircraft Engineering and Operation of Aviation Equipment, acted as the supervisor of the young specialist's graduate qualification work. The State Examination Commission rated the project as "excellent".
The “Diploma as a Startup” program has been implemented at Research Technical University since 2020. Graduates with business ideas can create a unique product or technology, get recommendations from experienced entrepreneurs, and find investors. The defense of the startup gives three additional points for admission to the university's master's program.
Vyacheslav Smirnov, a developer of a mobile game and a graduate of the School of Economics, Management and Law, was the first to present his startup. In 2021, five INRTU students took part in the program; last year, experts praised the startups of 14 students.
Nikita Petrov, a graduate of the 2023 program, said that design bureaus spend a lot of time and money on conceptual designs and prototypes of UAVs:
"In spite of this, there are high design errors, because there is no direct link between the flight performance and the geometric dimensions of the future product. The result of the design engineers' work is unknown in advance".
The engineer student proposes to optimize the work of the design bureau by reducing the time for preliminary design of the UAV to four months. Nikita Petrov believes that it is important to be able to predict the flight and technical characteristics of the vehicle and its behavior in the air at this stage.
The agency carrying out the work receives the terms of reference (ToR), which describes the requirements for the aircraft. These are duration, cruising speed and height of flight, aerodynamic quality, permissible wind speed, payload weight, type of takeoff and landing. The designer, on the basis of the ToR, sets his own limitations on the product - the permissible overload, the location of engines (on the fuselage, on the wing), the choice of wing and tail profile, as well as the relative parameters of the airframe. During the design process, they are variable.
A graduate of Irkutsk Technical University tested the proposals on the example of SIGMA and SIGMA-mini UAVs with an engineering calculation. The error in the design work is minimal (about 2%). Nikita Petrov added that the new methodology will reduce the time to create a prototype of the device, thus increasing the profitability of production.
