Fabrizio Oliviero

Conceptual Design of a Very Large PrandtlPlane Freighter

The airfreight is a marginal sector of the international commerce because of the high operating costs. This paper presents a proposal to cut these costs by introducing a very large PrandtlPlane aircraft, conceived to transport intermodal containers along 3000 nm. continental and intercontinental routes at 0.7 Mach. Both aircraft technologies and logistic system are briefly discussed.

Design of a prototype of light amphibious prandtlplane

The present paper describes the activities carried out during the research project “IDINTOS”, co-funded by the Regional Government of Tuscany (Italy), coordinated by the University of Pisa and carried out by a consortium of public bodies and private firms. The project, started in 2011 and lasted 30 months, aimed to the design and manufacturing of a ultralight amphibious PrandtlPlane prototype. The PrandtlPlane is a particular box-wing configuration, studied at University of Pisa since 1990s, whose main advantages are the improvement of aerodynamic efficiency and flight safety. The paper underlines some of the results of the project, achieved by means of both numerical and experimental analyses, which confirm such advantages and provide data about drag reduction, stall behavior, longitudinal stability and maneuverability.

Design of an airfreight system based on an innovative PrandtlPlane aircraft

The PrandtlPlane configuration is conveniently applied to very large aircraft and, in this paper, the design of a freighter of 24 intermodal containers is chosen as a significant example of application. The maximum range of this big freighter is 3.000 miles. The range limitation is accomplished by the definition of a set of freight airports to be positioned properly worldwide; a mathematical theory has been formulated in order to optimize the positions of these dedicated airports on the basis of economical parameters; some examples are shown in the first part.. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the optimization of the aircraft configuration, using a homemade optimization code; the objective function is the aerodynamic efficiency with constraints regarding the stability of flight and stall characteristics. A set of different local minima are determined, corresponding to solutions that satisfy all the constraints imposed and the absolute minimum is chosen inside this set on the basis of further conditions on structural aspects. The solutions include PrandtlPlanes in which a third lifting surface is considered in addition to the configuration.

A personal robotic flying machine with vertical takeoff controlled by the human body movements

We propose a cooperative research project aimed at designing and prototyping a new generation of personal flying robotic platform controlled by movements of the human body using a symbiotic human-robot-flight machine interaction. Motors with ducted fun propulsion and power supply, and a VSLAM system will be integrated in the final flight machine with short and vertical takeoff and landing capability and composite (or light alloy) airframe structure for low speed and low altitude flight. In the project, we will also develop a flight simulator to test the interaction between the flying machine and the human body movements. In this first step, for human safety, the flying machine will be controlled by an autopilot colligated in a closed-loop control with the simulator.