FEASIBILITY ASSESSMENT OF SPINNING CYLINDER LIFT FOR REMOTE FLIGHT IN MARS AND TITAN ATMOSPHERES

摘要

A study is presented that aims to assess the feasibility of employing a spinning cylinder lifting assembly, instead of a conventional high lift fixed wing, which makes use of the Magnus effect to provide the lifting force for a micro- UAV vehicle to explore the surface of the Planet Mars, and/or Saturn’s moon, Titan. It is shown that modern computational methods for the solution of the laminar unsteady Navier-Stokes equations can successfully capture the physical trends and magnitudes of the lift and drag, and the viscous flow physics associated with static and spinning cylinders in sub-critical Reynolds number crossflows. The method, applied to a spinning cylinder, at different surface to freestream velocity ratios, for a constant U=15m/s freestream in the Earth, Mars and Titan surface atmosphere conditions, suggests that a spinning cylinder lift based micro-UAV might be feasible as a vehicle for the exploration of the Titanian surface, but would not be feasible for similar application in the very rarefied atmosphere of Mars.