Numerical Investigation of Effects of Airspeed and Rotational Speed on Quadrotor UAV Propeller Thrust Coefficient

Abstract

In this article, a numerical investigation was performed on a quadrotor unmanned aeroial vehicles (UAV) propeller to examine the effects of airspeed and rotational speed on thrust coefficient, which is one of the most important parameters on propeller aerodynamic performance. For that purpose, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analyses of an 11-inch propeller were carried out at different airspeeds and rotational speeds in vertical climbing flight conditions. In order to have the optimum number of mesh elements in the computational domain, mesh independence analyses were also conducted. In conclusion, the results of the analyses with the k-ω SST turbulence model were shown that increase in rotational speed was led to higher turbulent kinetic energy. Furthermore, higher rotational speeds also resulted in higher differences between numerical estimations and experimental data but were found to become more independent from airspeed.