Determination of aerodynamic characterisitcs of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle by analytical techniques

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical study of quick methods for determining the aerodynamic characteristics of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The purpose of the research is to create tools for aircraft shape optimization problems. The developed analytical techniques allow one to determine aerodynamic lift and drag coefficients as well as the efficiency characteristics based on the aircraft general characteristics. Other properties that can be derived are the wing shape parameters, the take-off mass, the structural mass, and the required characteristics of the propulsion and power supply system according to the specified flight performance characteristics. The use of these techniques for discrete points with aerodynamic characteristics obtained numerically or experimentally allows one to extrapolate the results to the entire range of operating angles of attack. As a result, the stages of conceptual and preliminary design of UAVs can be passed in a shorter span of time. Two UAVs have been designed in Tomsk State University with the use of the proposed techniques. The first is the preliminary designed UAV Prototype-2E; the second is the Prototype-2T UAV, which has been fully designed and then manufactured. The data calculated with these techniques on a SKIF Cyberia supercomputer in Tomsk State University are compared with the results of numerical simulations implemented in OpenFOAM and ANSYS Fluent. Good agreement of the results is revealed.