VTOL Drone CFD Simulation, ANSYS Fluent Training

Description

VTOL UAV Aerodynamic CFD Simulation, ANSYS Fluent Training

Introduction

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV for short) is a term that, in terms of what it signifies, is quite similar to that of a drone. Therefore, a UAV is essentially anything that can fly in the air but is unmanned in the sense that it doesn’t have an internal pilot operating it.

A VTOL is a UAV that uses rotors to enable vertical takeoff, hovering, and landing, much like a helicopter. All multi-copter drones and some hybrid fixed-wing aircraft fall under this category.

In this simulation, a VTOL UAV with four propellers rotating around the vertical axis and one rotating around the horizontal axis is modeled using ANSYS Fluent software. The device is moving upward at a speed of 20 m/s.

The geometry of the present model is three-dimensional and has been designed using Design Modeler software. We do the meshing of the present model with Fluent Meshing software. The mesh type is Polyhedra, and the element number is 1,761,160.

Methodology: VTOL UAV CFD Simulation

Multiple Reference Frames (MRF) are used to model the rotational motion of the propellers.

Conclusion

After the simulation process was finished, contours and vectors for parameters such as velocity and pressure were obtained. As shown in the velocity contours, the velocity has decreased downside of the VTOL. While it is maximum over the nose and behind the UAV.

In the static pressure parameter case, as it was predictable, the UAV’s upper side endured the highest pressure. The maximum static pressure is applied to the propellers’ edges, which tells us about the necessity of the manufacturing focus on this component.

The force exerted in the vertical direction to the UAV is 124.94788N.