Research on Aerodynamic Characteristics of Water-air Amphibious Solar Four-rotor

Abstract

Solar four-rotor UAV combines the advantages of solar vehicle and four-rotor vehicle, and has attracted wide attention. However, due to the existence of solar panels, the installation height and wheelbase of the rotor will affect the aerodynamic efficiency of the whole aircraft. Through XFlow CFD software based on particle lattice Boltzmann technology, the unsteady numerical simulation of the whole solar four-rotor UAV flow field is carried out, and the aerodynamic characteristics of the vehicle are analyzed. The results show that the influence of rotor height on the lift of the whole aircraft is small, and the larger the installed wheelbase of the rotor, the greater the lift of the whole aircraft. The main reason is that when the wheelbase is small, the downwash flow generated by the rotor impacts on the solar panel and causes aerodynamic interference to the whole aircraft.

Keywords

• solar four-rotor
• xflow cfd
• lower wash flow
• lift
• aerodynamic layout optimization