Experimental Investigation of a Small Drone Propeller Aerodynamics in Forward Flight

What is it about?

In recent years, the use of small drones has surged in various fields, among which urban air mobility, agriculture and territorial monitoring. However, as their popularity grows, so does the need for a deeper understanding of their aerodynamic performance to safely operate them in populated areas. These small-scale air vehicles indeed operate in different operative conditions with respect to their larger counterpart, the helicopters. The shape of their frame and their propellers has consequently to be adapted to improve their performance and reliability, due to the different fluid dynamics phenomena which occur at these reduced dimensions. In the present work, a small-scale drone propeller is experimentally investigated in its advancing motion, an operative condition usually denominated as forward flight. As the forward flight velocity is increased, considerable differences are observed with respect to the steady hover condition. The challenging fluid dyanmics regime which characterizes this small propeller puts a strain on the classical computational tools, usually considered to predict the propellers performance. To this aim, a first experimental campaign was retained necessary to take the first steps and eventually become a paradigm to validate the existing computational tools.

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