Flight Testing of Small, Electric Powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

Flight testing methods are proposed to flnd the drag polar for small UAVs powered by electric motors with flxed-pitch propellers. Wind tunnel testing was used to characterize the propeller-motor e‐ciency. The drag polar was constructed using data from ∞ight tests at various airspeeds. The proposed methods are implemented for a small UAV. A drag polar was found for this aircraft with CDo equal to 0.021, K1 equal to 0.229, and K2 equal to -0.056.