CUVX Design Report - the AOE home page - Virginia Tech

CUVX Design – VT Team 2 Page 25AAG and EARS are currently being developed, and will utilize the same technology as EMALS. It may bepossible to combine components of EARS and EMALS into one electromagnetic system.The ship synthesis model uses the equations in Figure 13 to model the impact of aviation systems in CUVX.The weight of UAVs (W UAV ), UCAVs (W UCAV ), and helicopters (W HELO ) was determined from informationprovided by the Virginia Tech UCAV-N Team or by online sources of existing aircraft. The area each aircraftrequires was also provided by the UCAV-N team. L FltReq and B FltReq , the required length and beam of the maindeck for flight operations, were adapted from CVN dimensions considering the lighter UCAV-N’s. L FltReq wasbased on the distances found in Figure 9, which shows CVN recovery area elements with a breakdown of the totalrecovery area length. The hook touch down point (HTDP) is the nominal target for the aircraft when landing. Thedistance to the hook touchdown point (HTDP) on a CVN is 55 meters. This was decreased to 15 meters for CUVXsince the aircraft are unmanned, lighter, slower and have more accurate landing capabilities. On a CVN, the HTDPis located between the first and second wires. On CUVX the HTDP is located before the first wire. The distancefrom the HTDP to the first wire on CUVX is 0.9 meters. The distance between wires on CUVX is the same as on aCVN, 12 meters. Since there is no barricade on the recovery deck of CUVX, the barricade stretch and turnaroundlength is not required. The wire run-out required for the UCAV-N is 72 meters. With this configuration theminimum length of the flight deck on CUVX is 100 meters. The minimum beam of the flight deck is 25 meters toallow the UCAV-Ns to land with adequate clearance on each side of its wings and wheels. In the ship synthesismodel, the length of the flight deck, L Flt , is estimated to be 75% of the LWL to give adequate space for aviationoperations, combat systems and other ship main deck features.W F23 is the total aircraft weight for the entire ship, including UCAV’s, UAV’s, and HELO’s. Since weights forvarious aviation systems were not available during the initial stages of Concept Exploration, approximations weremade using CV 67 data. The minimum number of aircraft elevators was determined to be two for a ship of thissize. These elevators can only be internal elevators because a deck edge elevator would be detrimental to the RCSof CUVX. The weight of an aircraft elevator, W ACElev , is based on a linear approximation where each elevator is 10times the weight of a UCAV.The minimum number of weapons elevators on CUVX is three to provide redundancy and separation. Theweight of a weapons elevator, W WeapElev , is 100 MT. The area of a weapons elevator, A WeapElev , is adapted from CV67 data where the area of each elevator is 16.7 square meters.Figure 13. CUVX Aviation System Characteristics