Aerodynamic Benefit of Aircraft Formation Flight

Abstract

The improved aerodynamic efficiency of formation flight is a result of induced drag reductions when multiple wings fly in close lateral proximity to one another to take advantage of the upwash fields of neighboring wings. The spacing in the streamwise direction, however, can be sufficiently large for safe flight operations. Maximum drag benefits are seen when neighboring wings in a formation have a lateral overlap of approximately 10% of the span. Theoretical studies of elliptically loaded wings in formation show that induced drag reduction ranges from 44% for two wings to 81% for 25 wings. V‐shaped formations, often seen in flocks of migrating birds, result in equal distribution of the drag benefit amongst all the individuals. Formation flight has the potential to result in significantly reduced fuel burn even when applied to existing aircraft and routes.

Swarm Eye: A Distributed Autonomous Surveillance System

“…As soon as the unit will be airborne and get registered into the swarm they will form a formation to fly, which could be arrow, diamond, semi-circle, circle formations etc. This initial formation can be decided based on a few factors, for example if a swarm unit intents to save fuel then they will adopt the arrow formation [18], [19], and [20]. In the case of poor visibility, the formation will switch into a dynamic formation offering maximum visibility.…”

Coordinated Control of Multiple UAVs : Theory and Flight Experiment

“…System robustness can be improved by making redundancy so that a functional failure of one UAV among a team does not necessarily lead a mission failure. There is also an aerodynamic benefit to reduce a power consumption of each aircraft when flying in formation 1 . Various strategies for multi-agent coordination have been investigated in robotics community since many years.…”