Abstract
Wind disturbance posed difficulties for the stability of the micro air vehicles (MAVs) with attitude variation. In this paper, the aerodynamic performance of a MAV with six coaxial rotor pairs considering the horizontal wind is investigated by both experiments and numerical simulations. First, the effect of the horizontal wind on the multi-rotor aircraft is analyzed in detail. Then, low-speed wind tunnel tests were performed to obtain the thrust and power consumption and the aerodynamic performance of the multi-rotor aircraft (l/D = 1.2 and h/D = 0.19) with the rotational speed of 1500–2300 r/min in the horizontal wind ranged from 0 to 5 m/s. Finally, the distribution of streamline, the pressure of the blade tip, and the velocity and the vortices in the flow field of a multi-rotor aircraft with horizontal wind disturbance, were simulated and studied using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. Through the comparison of experimental results and simulation results, it can be seen that the horizontal wind disturbance will increase power consumption to weaken the aerodynamic performance at higher rotor speeds. However, larger thrust and better hover performance are obtained at lower rotational speeds with good wind resistance. Additionally, due to the mutual induction between rotor wakes, the interactions of downwash flows become more intense at higher rotational speeds or larger wind speeds where the vortexes at the blade tip deformed and moved along with the wind.
Highlights
Micro multi-rotor aircraft have developed rapidly due to the continuous improvement of technology in flight control
It can bethe seen that the results of the increase in wind speed, the slipstream moves more with the wind and the interaction between have larger power consumption with the effects of horizontal wind, which cause a decrease in hover the experiment and simulation are basically consistent, and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation is capable to capture adjacent coaxial rotor pairs is more intense
Conclusions are as follows: (1) The power consumption of the multi-rotor aircraft obviously increases with the horizontal wind speed
Summary
Micro multi-rotor aircraft have developed rapidly due to the continuous improvement of technology in flight control. Multi-rotor aircraft with coaxial rotor pairs show better hover performance. The existence of those aerodynamic disturbances will seriously affect the aerodynamic performance of micro multi-rotor aircraft [6,7]. They will be affected by wind gusts when a micro air vehicle is working outdoors, resulting in more complicated aerodynamic interference between rotors. It is necessary to study the ability of resisting wind disturbance for micro multi-rotor aircraft to improve their flight efficiency and aerodynamic characteristics
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