Effects of Wind Disturbance on the Aerodynamic Performance of a Quadrotor MAV during Hovering

Abstract

Wind disturbance could render thrust and power variation or even causing roll which is difficult to maintain a steady flight in gust especially when the horizontal or vertical wind is involved. In this paper, the horizontal wind and vertical wind are presented to study the influence of wind disturbance on aerodynamic characteristics of the quadrotor aircraft in hovering by experiments and numerical simulations. First, the simplified aerodynamic model with the wind disturbance was analyzed in detail. Also, the low-speed wind tunnel tests were performed to obtain the thrust and power variation of the quadrotor aircraft with rotor spacing ratio s = 1.1 -1.8 in both horizontal and vertical winds of 0-5 m/s with the rotational speed ranging from 1500 to 2300 rpm. Finally, the simulations are performed by utilizing the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS to study the flow field distribution of quadrotor with the influence of the wind disturbance. The comparison between experimental results and simulation results shows that the quadrotor achieves better aerodynamic performance with larger thrust and smaller power consumption at rotor spacing ratio s = 1.8 . Additionally, the quadrotor can effectively resist the horizontal wind disturbance, which will bring larger power loading for the quadrotor, especially at 2.5 m/s. However, the vortices near blade-tip move upwards and deform with the influence of vertical wind, resulting in the reduction of thrust and aerodynamic performance of the quadrotor.

Gusts Encountered by Flying Vehicles in Proximity to Buildings

“…A single rotor disturbance model is used and is shown in Figure 16. Similar models have previously been used for turbulence and disturbance analysis for small multirotor aircraft with success [70,71]. A single rotor disturbance model is used and is shown in Figure 16.…”

“…Considerable recent published work has considered the alleviation of gust loads on aircraft [66][67][68][69][70] and in some cases even harvesting it [71][72][73]. However, severe gusts around buildings can pose a major challenge for flight of different vehicular scales and configurations.…”

Application of CFD Numerical Simulation Methods in the Field of UAV Research

“…In this case, studying the wing and aerodynamic design of UAVs can effectively improve the lift-drag ratio and endurance of UAVs. In addition, it also plays a certain role in reducing noise, reducing costs, and increasing the use of scenes and range [12].…”

Control System for Quadcopter UAV based SMC-RBFNN with External Disturbance

“…According to this definition, what is now required is a UAV that can travel independently. It is possible for an autonomous UAV to follow a predefined trajectory, as demonstrated in research [8]. This UAV will move in accordance with the command (in the form of a coordinate trajectory), and then it will autonomously travel to the destination place.…”