Aerodynamic Characteristics of Paradrogue Assembly in an Aerial Refueling System

摘要

Unmanned aerial vehicles are now considered an integral part of modern military operations. One of the challenging issues in future unmanned aerial vehicles operations is autonomous aerial refueling, which will raise the current unmanned aerial vehicle mission boundaries set by vehicle endurance and range limitations. Aerial refueling is considered a routine procedure for human operators, but for unmanned aerial vehicle applications, it requires a high level of autonomous technologies based on solid recognition of the overall refueling system design principles. In this paper, the aerodynamic characteristics of a paradrogue assembly in a hose-drogue-probe type of aerial refueling system are investigated through wind-tunnel experiments and computational fluid dynamics simulation analysis. In particular, the drag characteristics of a paradrogue assembly with various component geometric configurations (struts and canopy) are studied. An empirical model based upon a statistical design methodology is constructed, which allows prediction of the drag coefficient of a paradrogue assembly upon these configuration changes.