CFD methods to study the adverse effect on aerodynamic characteristics of male UAV

Abstract

Many flight practices tell us that meteorological factors such as newlinelow-altitude wind shear, atmospheric turbulence, heavy rainfall, ice accretion, newlineand thunderstorms have caused countless cruel flight incidents and accidents. newlineNowadays, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) such as Medium-Altitude newlineLong Endurance (MALE) and High-Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) play newlinean important role in Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) newlinemission operations. A typical MALE UAV has to operate for more than 20 newlinehours during its mission and may have to cover more than 500 km range and newlinean altitude of 30000 ft which flies in various unexpected adverse conditions. newlineAero data for adverse effects is required to formulate the flight control law as newlinewell as autopilot to fly MALE UAVs under such adverse conditions. newlineThe present research work aims to study the effect of the local low newlinepressure region in the atmosphere and newlineheavy rain on aerodynamic newlinecharacteristics of MALE UAV configuration with single-element airfoil wing newlineand also torrential rainfall rate on aerodynamic characteristics of MALE UAV newlinetwo-element airfoil wing during cruise/loiter using CFD approach. A hybrid newlinemedium mesh arrived through a grid-independent study was used for all the newlineCFD simulations. For large low-pressure pocket past MALE UAV with newlineSEAW study, low-pressure region in front of fuselage with a pressure 10 newline15 % lower than the free stream pressure at an altitude of 3.69 km Indian newlineReference Atmosphere(IRA) conditions, flow velocity of 41.90 m/s and newlinecruise angle of attack of 5.6° are considered. newline