Determining the Aerodynamic Characteristics of a Propeller-Driven Anti-UAV Fighter While Designing Air Propellers

Given the rising importance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), this article addresses the urgent scientific problem of determining the aerodynamic characteristics of a UAV while laying out the propellers for the wings. We discuss the methodology for experimental wind-tunnel studies of aircraft configurations with propellers. It is shown that a characteristic feature of the configuration small-elongation wing with propellers is the absence of elements that are not affected by propellers. This feature makes it difficult to implement and automate a wind tunnel experiment, since there are problems with providing similar criteria for a working propeller; it is difficult to achieve perfect balancing for solid drive propellers, which causes vibration, the level of which depends on uncontrolled factors; the inability to neglect the presence of the body elements influence to the blades of propellers; the difficulty of direct measuring propeller thrust and torque. The presented methodology involves the integrated usage of experimental and numerical methods to eliminate the difficulties in conducting physical experiments in a wind tunnel. This approach makes it possible to combine the high credibility of experimental data in the study of the physical essence of phenomena with high efficiency and accuracy in determining aerodynamic characteristics by numerical methods. Using this approach, we established dependences of the aerodynamic characteristics of the small-elongation wing configuration with counter-rotating propellers on the geometric and kinematic parameters of the configuration for other extensions and constrictions of the wings. These data can serve as the basis for the development of recommendations for the selection of sensible geometric parameters of the aerodynamic configuration of a small-elongation wing with counter-rotating propellers.