What is it about?
The presented work outlines a process for evaluating a known structure's aerodynamic performance while within gusts and vertically moving air. The process is used to represent the performance of the vehicle as a summation of the energy state of the vehicle while it traverses a set gust condition. The goal of this study is to increase the range or endurance of an aircraft through structural design that optimizes the energy gains, or reduction in losses, while within these vertical gusts.
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Photo by Konrad Wojciechowski on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The atmosphere is always in motion resulting in vertical air motion from a variety of sources, this air motion provides a passive method to reduce the power required to fly. By quantifying the performance of a baseline aircraft future work can be done to select and optimized structure that extracts more energy from the moving air, allowing for a passive drag reduction.
Perspectives
This work describes the foundation of the ongoing work completed by myself and other members at the Applied Aerodynamics Laboratory of Flight here at Toronto Metropolitan University. This work is especially interesting when considering its application for ultra-long endurance aircraft such as the Clean Renewable Energy Aerial Test Vehicle (CREATeV) worked on in our lab.
Korbin Mallette
Ryerson University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A Structural Design Study of Composite Unpiloted Aircraft for Gust Energy Harvesting, July 2024, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2024-3501.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Clean Renewable Energy Aerial Test Vehicle
CREATeV is a solar power, ultra-long endurance aircraft that is worked on here in our lab and is one example of an aircraft that can see performance gains through passive gust harvesting.
Applied Aerodynamics Laboratory of Flight
Come checkout our lab here at Toronto Metropolitan University where we work on flight testing, wing tunnel testing, and other flight performance designs for high endurance aircraft and sailplanes.
Contributors
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