Abstract
Small unmanned aerial vehicles (SUAVs) have found a widespread application in past decades. However, as the criticality of the missions for which they can be used increases, the demand for improvement of their efficiency increases as well. The paper focuses on a propeller driven SUAVs of a multirotor type, equipped with an electric motor, battery and propeller. The paper presents a simplified method of calculation of the SUAV maximal endurance, if the characteristics of all components of the propulsion system are known. To improve the overall efficiency of the propulsion system of an SUAV, the correct combination of all propulsion system components is critical. However, the largest impact on the maximal endurance is, arguably, caused by the propeller. The paper proposes a simple method of optimizing the propeller characteristics for hover and compares the proposed propeller design with conventional and commercially available propellers.
Highlights
The field of application of SUAVs in the past decades has been growing and the demand for their better flight performance, especially for challenging applications such as meteorological measurements or surveillance and scanning operations to e.g. quickly map a large area to determine a presence of life-threatening substances, has been growing as well
The most challenging parameter to tune is their maximal endurance. The root of this problem lies in the propulsion system itself, which often consists from a battery, electric motor and propeller(s) [1]
This paper presents an algorithm based on the Joukowsky blade element model, closely described in [3]
Summary
The field of application of SUAVs in the past decades has been growing and the demand for their better flight performance, especially for challenging applications such as meteorological measurements or surveillance and scanning operations to e.g. quickly map a large area to determine a presence of life-threatening substances, has been growing as well. The most challenging parameter to tune is their maximal endurance The root of this problem lies in the propulsion system itself, which often consists from a battery, electric motor and propeller(s) [1]. The paper presents a quick overview of the characteristics of all components of the propulsion system and a simple algorithm, which combines all characteristics to obtain the maximal endurance. It presents a rapid blade element method of calculating the propeller performance characteristics. With evolution algorithms, this method could be used to obtain new, non-conventional geometries, which could further increase the efficiency of the propulsion system of the SUAV
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