What is it about?
Current and future applications of drones and helicopter-like systems involve operation surrounding urban regions. Such environments are prone to winds that are highly non-uniform, potentially leading to detrimental effects on the performance of aerial vehicles. Therefore, this work focuses on studying various rotor systems - single, coaxial and quad-rotors as observed in helicopters and drones, under wind gusts. The aim is ultimately to better understand the underlying physics behind the wind gust problem pertaining to rotors.
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Why is it important?
We examine the thrust variation in the rotor systems across a given gust event, in both the time and the frequency domains. We also study the blade level variation in angle of attack to further identify potential effects of the gust and the associated causes for the same. Our findings show high oscillations in the angle of attack values at several instances across the gust, leading to corresponding variations in the thrust. Furthermore, the wake development beneath the rotor system reveals the presence of blade-wake and wake-wake interactions, significantly affecting the frequency components excited in the thrust signal.
Perspectives
Gust response would be an important domain considering the rapidly expanding scope of UAVs for various civilian and military applications. Therefore, fundamental studies that dive deeper into the physics of the problem could prove extremely useful to the community, at present and more specifically in the future. I am grateful to have been provided with an opportunity to tackle such a problem, and it was a great learning experience working with my co-author on the same. I sincerely hope this work provides a good background for the community, and at the very least, I hope it was an interesting read.
Shrivathsan Narayanan
Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Effects of gust on the aerodynamics of multi-rotors, Physics of Fluids, December 2024, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0243421.
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