RPAS operations in urban airflow: Efficient modelling of representative wind speed variations along a flight path through a flow field with changing turbulence characteristics

Abstract

For remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) operating in the urban environment, the flight path will most likely pass through the turbulent airflow of building wakes. To attenuate or reject instabilities caused by the turbulent airflow, control systems strategies are being developed in preparation for increased demand on the smaller urban air mobility vehicles. In this paper, results from urban airflow measurements of four 1:300 scaled Canadian city model flow fields are examined to provide detailed understanding of flow characteristics that can be found in typical Canadian cities. The results show common patterns for the range of inner city wind speed and turbulence intensity but that within the urban boundary layer (UBL) the variation of flow characteristics does not have a gradient with respect to altitude and that flow characteristics are highly variable along representative flight paths. For the purpose of simulation of RPAS response to the complex urban airflow, methods for using real urban flows data as inputs to simulations is presented. Demonstration of an Advancing Fourier Series (AFS) method, using the measured city data, shows successful preservation of the spatial- and temporal-correlations for reconstruction of a flow time series offering a novel, efficient and flexible approach for implementation of a time-based simulation of RPAS response in complex flow environments such as the urban environment.