Conceptual Design and Multi-Disciplinary Computational Investigations of Multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Environmental Applications

Abstract

This study focuses on establishing a conceptual design for a multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The objectives of this octocopter are to reduce the number of flight cancelations and car accidents owing to low-visibility issues and to improve abnormal environmental conditions due to the presence of smoke. The proposed octocopter contains a convergent–divergent [CD] duct-based storage tank, which provides a platform to store saltwater and allows it to fly in foggy zones. Fine saltwater is sprayed from the octocopter and dispersed into the low clouds, thereby altering the vapor’s microphysical processes to break it up and improve visibility. The nature of the seawater and its enhanced fluid properties, due to the involvement of octocopter, creates the fluid flow mixing between atmospheric fluids and spraying particles, which increases the settling of foggy and smokey content groundward. For deployment, the conceptual design of the octocopter was initially constructed through analytical approaches. Additionally, three unique historical relationships were created. The standard engineering approaches involved in this work were stability analysis through MATLAB and fluid-property analysis through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) cum multiple reference frame (MRF) tools. The systematic model of this octocopter was developed by CATIA, and thereafter CFD and fluid–structure-interaction (FSI) analyses were computed, in ANSYS Workbench, on the octocopter for various environmental conditions. The aerodynamic forces on the drone, the enhancement of dynamic pressure by the presence of high amounts of rotors and nozzle sprayer, suitable material to resist aerodynamic loadings, and tests on the efficiency of the controller and its electronic components were investigated in detail. Finally, the proposed octocopter-based dynamic system was conceptually constructed.