Composite 3D printing for the small size unmanned aerial vehicle structure

The paper is concerned with design, analysis and fabrication of the small size Unmanned Aerial Vehicle composite frame structure. The frame has the form of a lattice composite structure manufactured by 3D printing of continuous carbon fibers and two matrix materials - thermoset, which is used to join the elementary fibers in the tow, and thermoplastic, which consolidates the cured tows into a unidirectional composite. The paper consists of contains the description of the 3D printing procedure, finite element analysis of the structure, test results for mechanical properties of the structural elements and the fabricated frame. The result of analysis is in good agreement with experimental data.