Numerical Study of Aerodynamic Performance of a Multirotor Unmanned-Aerial-Vehicle Configuration

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 839-846 ◽  
Author(s):  
Je Young Hwang ◽  
Min Kyu Jung ◽  
Oh Joon Kwon
2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 652-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Murariu ◽  
Razvan Adrian Mahu ◽  
Adrian Gabriel Murariu ◽  
Mihai Daniel Dragu ◽  
Lucian P. Georgescu ◽  
...  

This article presents the design of a specific unmanned aerial vehicle UAV prototype own building. Our UAV is a flying wing type and is able to take off with a little boost. This system happily combines some major advantages taken from planes namely the ability to fly horizontal, at a constant altitude and of course, the great advantage of a long flight-time. The aerodynamic models presented in this paper are optimized to improve the operational performance of this aerial vehicle, especially in terms of stability and the possibility of a long gliding flight-time. Both aspects are very important for the increasing of the goals� efficiency and for the getting work jobs. The presented simulations were obtained using ANSYS 13 installed on our university� cluster system. In a next step the numerical results will be compared with those during experimental flights. This paper presents the main results obtained from numerical simulations and the obtained magnitudes of the main flight coefficients.


Author(s):  
T Rajesh Senthil Kumar ◽  
Sivakumar Venugopal ◽  
Balajee Ramakrishnananda ◽  
S Vijay

This paper proposes a methodology to harvest the benefits of camber morphing airfoils for small unmanned aerial vehicle (SUAV) applications. Camber morphing using discrete elements was used to morph the base airfoil, which was split into two, three, and four elements, respectively, to achieve new configurations, into the target one. . In total, thirty morphed airfoil configurations were generated and tested for aerodynamic efficiency at the Reynolds numbers of 2.5 × 105 and 4.8 × 105, corresponding to loiter and cruise Reynolds numbers of a typical SUAV. The target airfoil performance could be closely achieved by combinations of 5 to 8 morphed configurations, the best of which were selected from a pool of thirty morphed airfoil configurations for the typical design specifications of SUAV. Interestingly, some morphed airfoil configurations show a reduction in drag coefficient of 1.21 to 15.17% compared to the target airfoil over a range of flight altitudes for cruise and loiter phases. Inspired by the drag reductions observed, a case study is presented for resizing a SUAV accounting for the mass addition due to the morphing system retaining the benefits of drag reduction.


2014 ◽  
Vol 940 ◽  
pp. 295-299
Author(s):  
Le Zhang ◽  
Zhou Zhou ◽  
Hong Bo Wang

According to the stealth and conformal requirement of flying wing UAV(Unmanned Aerial Vehicle),an dorsal subsonic S-shaped inlet with long diffuser and large offset is designed. In the light of the characteristics of the inlet, new area distribution is created. In the study, the model with power system and the other model whose pipeline connected are established. The coupled numerical simulation is also carried out on the inflow/outflow integrated for flying wing UAV, and it is applied to study the longitudinal aerodynamic performance of UAV and the flow characteristics of inlet under different flight conditions. Results indicate: The longitudinal aerodynamic performance of the model with power system is close to the model with pipeline connected, but the moment characteristic of the former is better; The inlet characteristics are similar when Ma=0.5 and Ma=0.6; As the mach number increasing, the inlet performance decreases rapidly, Especially at the Ma = 0.7, there is a large low-pressure dominated region at the small angle of attack α = 2°, which leads to the total pressure recovery coefficient decreasing rapidly and the flow distortion increasing obviously.


2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 711-718
Author(s):  
Yao Lei ◽  
Mingxin Cheng

In this paper, an attempt was made to obtain the aerodynamic performance of a Hex-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle with different rotor spacing. The hover efficiency of the Hex-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle is analyzed by both experimental tests and numerical simulations. First, a series of index to characterize the aerodynamic performance of the Hex-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle are analyzed theoretically, and then both tests and simulations on a Hex-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle with different rotor spacing ratio ( i = 0.50, 0.56, 0.63, 0.71, 0.83) were presented in details. For a custom-designed test platform, the thrust, power loading and hover efficiency of the Hex-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle were obtained in this paper. Finally, computational fluid dynamics simulations are performed to obtain the streamline distributions of the flow field, pressure and velocity contour of the Hex-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle. Results show that the aerodynamic performance of the Hex-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle is varied by changing the rotor spacing. Specifically, the smaller rotor spacing may improve the aerodynamic performance of the Hex-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle by increasing the rotor interferences. In the meantime, the effects of mutual interference between the rotors are gradually reduced with the increase of the rotor spacing. Moreover, the uniformity of the streamline distribution, the shape and the symmetry of the vortex are necessary conditions for the Hex-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle to generate a larger thrust. It was also noted that the thrust increased by 5.61% and the overall efficiency increased by about 8.37% at i = 0.63 for the working mode (2200 r/min), which indicated that the rotor spacing ratio at i = 0.63 obtained a best aerodynamic performance.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document