Design, optimization and application of two-element airfoils for tactical UAV

Abstract

Owning to the requirements for longer endurance, larger payloads as well as simpler mechanical structure of tactical UAV, the two-element airfoil technology is introduced. Firstly, the aerodynamic characteristics of five common low-speed airfoils are calculated and compared. The airfoil with good aerodynamic performance after segmentation is selected as initial airfoil. Then, the influence of different segmentation types on the aerodynamic characteristics of airfoils is analyzed, and the segmentation type which brings the best aerodynamic benefits is selected. The slot parameters are optimized by NSGA-II optimization algorithm under cruising, take-off, and a large angle of attack states to obtain a high-performance self-adaption tactical UAV airfoil. Finally, the new airfoil is applied to Sparrow-hawk tactical UAV, the CL1.5 /CD of acceleration state increases 15.5%, the CL of large angle of attack increases 20.4% and the CL1.5 /CD of cruising state after enlarge the aspect ratio increase12.3%.

Design, Construction, and Flight Performance of an Electrically Operated Fixed-Wing UAV

“…The selection of the appropriate airfoils (wing, tail) will be made according to the maximum autonomy performance of the UAV for the given specifications. For the simplicity of the whole design process, the choices of the wing/tail airfoils are limited to 4-digit NACA airfoils [18].…”