Parametric study on formation flying effectiveness for a blended-wing UAV

Date

2018-04-26

Free to read from

Supervisor/s

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Springer

Department

Type

Article

ISSN

0921-0296

Format

Citation

Shin, HS., Antoniadis, A.F. & Tsourdos, A. Parametric study on formation flying effectiveness for a blended-wing UAV. Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, February 2019, Volume 93, Issue 1–2, pp. 179–191

Abstract

This paper investigates aerodynamic performance improvements of formation flight at transonic speeds for a medium size Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The metric for assessing the aerodynamic improvement of formation flight is the computed drag. The total drag for each formation configuration is compared with a single UAV, where a final drag reduction percentage is estimated. The evaluation of the aerodynamic performance is conducted by employing an in-house Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solver, grid generation and post processing tools. For critical understanding of the tendency of the formation efficiency depending on main parameters, broad formation configurations are analysed. The parameterisation includes number of aircraft, proximity and formation shape. Full realisation of the benefit predicted would need to be proven in the real world, but there is sufficient confidence to suggest that it exist: the empirical parametric analysis suggests that formation flight can improves aerodynamic performance and formation configuration greatly influence the degree of improvement.

Description

Software Description

Software Language

Github

Keywords

Formation flying, CFD analysis, Aerodynamic improvement, Drag reduction percentage, Formation configuration matrix

DOI

Rights

Attribution 4.0 International

Relationships

Relationships

Supplements

Funder/s