Abstract
Wind disturbance could render thrust and power variation or even causing roll which is difficult to maintain a steady flight in gust especially when the horizontal or vertical wind is involved. In this paper, the horizontal wind and vertical wind are presented to study the influence of wind disturbance on aerodynamic characteristics of the quadrotor aircraft in hovering by experiments and numerical simulations. First, the simplified aerodynamic model with the wind disturbance was analyzed in detail. Also, the low-speed wind tunnel tests were performed to obtain the thrust and power variation of the quadrotor aircraft with rotor spacing ratio s = 1.1 -1.8 in both horizontal and vertical winds of 0-5 m/s with the rotational speed ranging from 1500 to 2300 rpm. Finally, the simulations are performed by utilizing the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS to study the flow field distribution of quadrotor with the influence of the wind disturbance. The comparison between experimental results and simulation results shows that the quadrotor achieves better aerodynamic performance with larger thrust and smaller power consumption at rotor spacing ratio s = 1.8 . Additionally, the quadrotor can effectively resist the horizontal wind disturbance, which will bring larger power loading for the quadrotor, especially at 2.5 m/s. However, the vortices near blade-tip move upwards and deform with the influence of vertical wind, resulting in the reduction of thrust and aerodynamic performance of the quadrotor.
Highlights
Since their development, micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) have been widely used in military and civil fields with their flexible structure and good stability [1,2,3,4]
An isolated rotor is assumed not subject to any aerodynamic interference, which can be compared with the quadrotor with rotor interference to qualify the variation of the rotor interference, thrust variation and power consumption in this paper
It can be seen that quadrotors have better aerodynamic performance with the thrust increment of 5.3% and the power consumption reduction of 4.6% at spacing ratio at s = 1:8 compared with that at s = 1:1
Summary
Micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) have been widely used in military and civil fields with their flexible structure and good stability [1,2,3,4]. Despite the many advantages of MAVs, there are still many challenges on the design of stability and flight efficiency of MAVs. When the quadrotor aircraft flies in a city terrain, the wind speed generally does not exceed 5 m/s at a flight height of 20 m [5]. When the quadrotor aircraft flies in a city terrain, the wind speed generally does not exceed 5 m/s at a flight height of 20 m [5] At this time, there is strong aerodynamic interference between adjacent rotors, and the effect of the oncoming flow is needed to be considered. The horizontal and vertical components of wind direction are more significant in contributing to roll disturbances These are a result of a thrust difference across the span of the aircraft where the horizontal component primarily affects the velocity vector and the vertical component affects the angle of attack [6]. Proper rotor arrangement is beneficial to reduce the power consumption or even improve the flight efficiency of propulsion systems, especially when the wind disturbance is involved in this case
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