Design and Performance Evaluation of Propeller for Solar-Powered High-Altitude Long-Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Donghun Park,Yunggyo Lee,Cheolwan Kim,Taehwan Cho

doi:10.1155/2018/5782017

Abstract

Design, wind tunnel test, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, and flight test data analysis are conducted for the propeller of EAV-3, which is a solar-powered high-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle developed by Korea Aerospace Research Institute. The blade element momentum theory, in conjunction with minimum induced loss, is used as a basic design method. Airfoil data are obtained from CFD analysis, which takes into account the low Reynolds number effect. The response surface is evaluated for design variables by using design of experiment and kriging metamodel. The optimization is based on desirability function. A wind tunnel test is conducted on the designed propeller. Numerical analyses are performed by using a commercial CFD code, and results are compared with those obtained from the design code and wind tunnel test data. Flight test data are analyzed based on several approximations and assumptions. The propeller performance is in good agreement with the numerical and measurement data in terms of tendency and behavior. The comparison of data confirms that the design method, wind tunnel test, and CFD analysis used in this study are practically useful and valid for the development of a high-altitude propeller.

Highlights

High-altitude long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gained considerable interest because their use could replace several of the functions of a satellite, such as earth observation, telecommunication, reconnaissance, and surveillance
It must be noted that at the design point, the stall is minimized over the entire area of the blade, and the flow at each cross section in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) becomes practically identical to that of blade element momentum theory (BEMT) prediction
Since the aerodynamic coefficients for BEMT were obtained by the same CFD analysis, we can definitely expect that the CFD results and design code predictions approximate each other

Summary

Introduction

High-altitude long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gained considerable interest because their use could replace several of the functions of a satellite, such as earth observation, telecommunication, reconnaissance, and surveillance. In 2003, it ascended to an altitude of over 29 km, the highest climb record in the world achieved by a propeller-driven UAV at that time. Another successful and widely known example is Zephyr [7, 8], which was designed and built by the British company, QinetiQ. It holds the official endurance world record. It is currently being developed as a part of the Airbus high-altitude pseudosatellite (HAPS) program. Other examples include the Solar Eagle, which was developed by Boeing (DARPA Vulture II Program) [9]

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Results

Conclusion