Computational Investigation of Aerodynamic Characteristics for Elliptic UAVs’ Wing

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, UAVs, gained an important role in modern military and civilian applications. Developments in UAVs technology improve its performance and maneuverability with acceptable cost. Elliptic airfoil had been widely used in the development of Rotor/Wing subsonic aircraft. The present work aims to investigate the effect of various elliptic airfoil parameters, such as Reynolds number, angle of attack and airfoil thickness, on aerodynamic behavior using two-dimensional computational study. The computational results were validated by experimental results. Angles of attack was evaluated from 0° to 18° in order to analyze aerodynamic characteristics up to stall condition, while Reynolds number was evaluated at values of 1×10⁵, 3×105, 2×106, and 8×106, to cover the range of rotary and fixed wing flight conditions. Thickness ratio was ranged from 5% to 25% to include the UAVs airfoil thicknesses so that choice best thickness gets max lift to drag ratio. In addition, the thicknesses location was evaluated for a range of 30% to 70% to get suitable location gets max left to drag ratio. The ANSYS-Fluent software was used with Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model, and found that the maximum lift to drag ratio which improve the UAV capability in this study is at Re=2×106, angle of attack at 8°, max thickness ratio of (0.1chord) located at (0.3chord).