Numerical Investigations of Aerodynamics Characteristics of Main Rotors in Helicopter UAV Used for Pesticide Spraying in Agriculture

Abstract

In the last several decades past, Helicopters UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) have quickly developed and day by day, they play an important role in human life. As it is well-known, helicopters UAV make some outstanding characteristics such as light weight, flexibility and particularly automatically controlled. By applying these characteristics, we research and manufacture Helicopter UAV using for spraying pesticide in agriculture. One of the most important components is main rotor because main rotor generated thrust, drag and momentum. Helicopters UAV efficient changed depending on main rotor. The research works focus on aerodynamics characterization of main rotor in helicopter UAV. This work uses CFD tool in ANSYS CFX software to calculate the aerodynamics parameters generated by main rotor using in UAV. The aim is to characterize the aerodynamics characteristics such as thrust, drag, pressure, aerodynamics quality on the different flight modes (hover, vertical and forward flight). Firstly, the simulations are carried out in hover flight mode with different blade pitch angles. The results are compared to experiment date in another research to validate numerical results. Then, the simulations are carried out in vertical flight mode and forward flight mode. The results showed that thrust and drag coefficient creased with increasing blade pitch angle. When blade pitch angle started from 1800, thrust coefficient decreased but drag coefficient increased sharply. The rotor performance was measured by aerodynamics quality and numerical results showed that the best rotor performance was at 900. In the vertical flight mode, the thrust and drag coefficient decreased with increasing vertical velocity but rotor performance increased slightly. The best vertical velocity for vertical flight is around 2 m/s and 3 m/s. Finally, in forward flight mode, the aerodynamics characterizations of rotors depended on azimuthal angular position of blade or time. Our helicopter operates in environment with light gust. The results showed the change of aerodynamics coefficient to time. Both thrust and drag coefficient changed but the rotor performance did not change much.