Experimental Investigation of Icing Effects on a Hovering Drone Rotor Performance

Abstract

A scaled version of the APT70 drone rotor, typical of small to medium UAV rotors, was tested in a 9-meter-high cold chamber for a wide range of icing parameters. The drone rotor used has four blades with varying chord and twist settings. The objective of this study was to investigate icing effects on the rotor aerodynamic performance, based on experimental data, for varying rotor speeds, precipitation rates, droplet sizes and air temperatures. Aerodynamic loads were measured using the built-in load cell, and data were compared to photographs taken during testing as well as ice thickness measurements at the end of tests. The impact of each test parameter and their variations on the degradation of the rotor’s performances was evaluated. The results show that larger droplets and lower RPMs and pitch angles generate a more rapid degradation of the performances due to the airflow around the blades and tip-vortex affecting the collection efficiency of the blades. With the smaller droplets, the air temperature did not affect the performance degradation, only the type of ice accumulation. However, with the larger droplets, degradation of the performances was less severe at warmer temperatures since almost no ice accumulated at the tip and droplets were expelled before freezing.

Keywords

• icing
• drones
• UAV
• hover flight
• VTOL