An Experimental Study to Investigate the Effect of the Angle of Attack on VToL UAV Propellers

摘要

Popularity of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is continuously increasing for scientists as UAVs allow observation of large areas of land surfaces economically and swiftly when compared to traditional methods. And today the importance of UAVs is also increasing for civil applications such as transporting, agricultural spraying etc. These kind of civil applications are expected to require more power and different propeller geometries to provide higher payload capacities. In this context, aerial vehicle's propeller size and pitch are important parameters in order to obtain proper lifting capacity for Vertical Take-off and Landing (VToL) UAVs. There is a number of terms to define the propeller's specifications such as diameter, pitch, disc area relation, bore, material type etc. These characteristics must be calculated to design the optimal propeller accordingly to match specific needs of aerial vehicle characteristics. It is very important that both angle of attack and diameter should properly be investigated to be able to choose optimal propeller. The effect of angle of attack dominates characteristics of the propellers and in turn, aerial vehicles. In this manner, this paper focuses on the angle of attack of the propeller and propeller length as these variables have a huge effect on power consumption and lifting capacity. The effect of angle of attack that dominates characteristics of propellers and lifting capacity of aerial vehicles was investigated. Experiment results are presented for comparison of the propellers performance and outcomes were explained using charts.