Study On Experiment And Numerical Simulation For Propeller Aerodynamic Performance Of Unmanned Aerial Vechicle

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV) has been born nearly one hundred years ago. The advantages of UAV is highlighted due to the development of the aviation industry and science and technology. UAV can fulfill the high-risk mission that manned aircraft cannot. And it has advantages such as low cost, low loss and high mobility, etc.. UAV includes Propeller UAV. Propeller UAV gets more attention for its low fuel consumption, low cost and economical efficiency. The engine power convert to UAV driving force by propeller, therefore, The aerodynamic performance of propeller is an important factor affecting the overall performance of UAV.The reverse engineering analysis method that build three-dimensional modeling of propeller is intruduced. The ropeller is scanned by ATOS optical measurement instrument to get point cloud. Using Imageware modules for point cloud processing and using UG to get three-dimensional modeling of propeller.Icems is used to meshing of Propeller. Unstructured grids is used for rotating propeller area and structured grid is used for propeller surrounding air area which guarantees accuracy while improve simulation calculation convergence speed. MRF numerically is used to simulate the rotation of the propeller. StarCCM + software is used to complete flow field analysis and calculation for propeller model, and iteration method is used to solve the grid nodes physical quantity. The results of this paper shows that the propeller thrust increases with the increase of propeller speed, and efficiency and propeller thrust reduces with the wind speed increase.Building the propellor experiment system device used for verifying the results of numerical simulation is accurate or not. This system can measure the speed, force, torque, power of propeller and UAV fuselage wind resistance. The results of this paper shows that numerical modeling calculation results of propeller is consistent with the experiment results. The accuracy of the numerical simulation model was verificated by this test method. The tension force from the numerical computation is sligtly bigger than the actural measurement for the frictional resistance between the power equipment composed by the propeller and engine and the experiment table.The performance change of the propeller was studied by numerial simulation method by which the pressure field, flowfield and temperature field around the propeller surface was analyzed. The propeller performances at different altitudes are predicted in addition which concludes that the airscrew thrust of the propeller will reduce as the increase of altitude.