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Numerical analysis of air flow past an unmanned aerial vehicle with internal propulsion system

Abstract:

According to the evolution of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), several investments have been increasing every year, especially in the field of aerodynamic characteristics. This paper deals with the pbkp_rediction of pressure and velocity fields on a UAV with internal propulsion system using computational fluid dynamics. The main objective is to evaluate the effect of the air flow past the aircraft and how this affects the aerodynamic performance by means of obtaining lift and drag forces. The airfoil of this aircraft is the 2415-3S, which was developed in previous research [1]. Since the computational domain is three-dimensional and complex, a hybrid mesh was developed and validated with a convergence study. Both the computational domain and the numerical solution were developed with commercial CAD and CFD software respectively. Air, incompressible and steady was simulated with a Reynolds number of 2.74 x 105. The selected turbulence model was Spalart-Allmaras which has been designed specifically for aerospace applications involving wall-bounded flows. Lift, drag and moment coefficients as well as pressure and velocity contours were obtained at different angles of attack. Experimental results will be obtained in future work to be compared to numerical ones and achieve the validation.