Subject Name: UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES

BASICS & APPLICATIONS

Subject Code: 15AE661

Module: 02

Prepared By: AKHIL A. CHANDRAN

Department: Aeronautical Engineering

Date : 05/02/2018
 Module II
The Air Vehicle:
• Basic Aerodynamics equations
• Aircraft polar,
• The real wing and Airplane
• Induced drag, the boundary layer
• Flapping wings
• Total Air-Vehicle Drag
Performance:
• Overview,
• Climbing flight,
• Range and Endurance – for propeller driven & jet-driven
aircraft
• Guiding Flight
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 The Air Vehicle

Overview
• Theprimaryforcesthatactonanairvehiclearethrust,lift,drag,a
ndgravity(or weight).
• In addition, angular moments about the pitch, roll, and yaw
axes cause the vehicle to rotate about those axes. Lift, drag,
and rotational moments are computed from dynamic
pressure, wing area, and dimensionless coefficients.
• The expressions for these quantities are the fundamental
aerodynamic equations that govern the performance of an
air vehicle.

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 The Air Vehicle
Overview – Contd.

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 Flapping wings

• Flapping wings

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 Flapping wings – Contd..
• The flapping of the wings of birds is not a pure up and down
or rowing backstroke as commonly thought.
• The wings of a flying bird move up and down as they are
flapped, but they also move forward due to the bird’s velocity
through the air mass. (Shown in the figure above) - Resulting
velocity and force triangles when the wing is moving
downward.
• The net velocity of the wing through the air mass is the sum
of the forward velocity of the bird’s body (V) and the
downward velocity of the wing, driven by the muscles of the
bird (w), which varies over the length of the wing, being
greatest at the wing tip.
• The resulting total velocity through the air mass is forward
and down, which means that the relative wind over the wing
is to the rear and up

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 Flapping wings – Contd..
• The net aerodynamic force generated by that relative wind (F)
is perpendicular to the relative wind and can be resolved into
two components, lift (L) upward and thrust (T) forward.
• The velocity and force triangles vary along the length of the
wing because wis approximately zero at the root of the wing,
where it joins the body of the bird and has a maximum value
at the tip of the wing, so that the net force, F, is nearly vertical
at the root of the wing and tilted furthest forward at the tip.
• As a result, it sometimes is said that the root of the bird’s wing
produces mostly lift and the tip produces mostly thrust.
• The following figure shows how flapping the wing up and
down can provide net lift and net positive thrust.

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 Flapping wings – Contd..

• Flight of Bird

• Wing Articulation

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 Flapping wings – Contd..
• The direction of the relative wind is tangent to the curved line that
varies over the up and down strokes. To maximize the average lift and
thrust, the angle of attack is “selected” by the bird to be large during
the down stroke, which creates a large net aerodynamic force.
• This results in a large lift and large positive thrust. During the up
stroke, the angle of attack is reduced, leading to a smaller net
aerodynamic force.
• The bird can make the negative thrust during the up stroke even
smaller by bending its wings during the up stroke as shown in figure
• This largely eliminates the forces induced by the outer portions of the
wings, which are the most important contributors to thrust, while
preserving much of the lift produced near the wing roots.
• As interest has increased in recent years in small, even tiny, UAVs, the
biomechanics of bird and insect flight are being closely re-examined
and recently have been successfully emulated by machines.
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 II. Aircraft Performance
Overview
• This section illustrates how the basic aerodynamic equations
presented previously can be used to predict the performance
of an aircraft and shows how that performance is related to
the key elements of the aircraft design.
• As an illustration of the power of the basic equations,
expressions for two of the most important capabilities of a
UAV, range and endurance, are derived.

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 Climbing Flight
• An airplane in steady linear flight in equillubrum with all the
forces acting on it as shown:

• The power vs velocity profile

is as shown:

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 Climbing Flight – contd..
• Power vs velocity for several altitude

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 Climbing Flight – Contd..
• With little more than these basic equations, it is possible to
derive expressions that provide reasonable approximations
for the range and endurance of propeller and jet-propelled
aircraft.
• This is not intended to be a basis for even an introductory
course in aerodynamics, but simplified derivations of these
expressions are provided in the following sections both to
illustrate the power of even a simple mathematical
description of the dynamics of flight
• And to provide some useful equations for estimating two of
the key performance characteristics of UAVs.

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 Range
• The range of a UAV is an important performance
characteristic. It is relatively easy to calculate in a reasonable
approximation.
• The range is dependent on a number of basic aircraft
parameters and strongly interacts with the weight of the
mission payload, because fuel can be exchanged for payload
within limits set by the ability of the air vehicle to operate
with varying center of gravity conditions.
• The fundamental relationship for calculating range and
endurance is the decrease in weight of the air vehicle caused
by the consumption of fuel.
• For a propeller-driven aircraft, this relationship is expressed in
terms of the specific fuel consumption, c, which is the rate of
fuel consumption per unit of power produced at the engine
shaft, Pe
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 Range – Contd..
• Propeller driven aircraft

• Jet aircraft
• For a jet aircraft a different measure of specific fuel
consumption is used, the thrust specific fuel consumption, ct,
which is the rate of fuel consumption per unit thrust
produced by the jet engine.

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 Range – Contd..
• It is worth spending a moment discussing the units of c and ct.
They are equal to the weight of fuel burned per unit time per
unit of power or thrust produced by the engine.
• For c in English units, this would be pounds per second per
foot-pound per second.
• The pound per second cancel out and the units of c are 1/ft
(in metric units, 1/m). For ct, the units are pounds per second
per pound of thrust, so the net units of ct are 1/sec.
• Since power equals thrust × velocity, we can express ct in
terms of c:

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 Range – Contd..
• Range of a Propeller Driven Aircraft

• Range vs weight ratio for propeller driven aircraft

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 Range – Contd..
• Simplified equation for range of a jet propelled aircraft

• As for a propeller-driven aircraft, we want low specific fuel

consumption (in this case thrust specific fuel consumption) and
large fuel capacity. In addition, for the jet-propelled aircraft we
would like to have the minimum possible air density, so we would
prefer to fly at high altitudes.
• In deriving this simple equation for the range of a jet-propelled
aircraft, we assumed that a number of things were constant. To
maintain ρ constant, the altitude must remain constant.
• To maintain C1/2L /CD constant, the velocity must be varied as the
weight of the aircraft decreases. It can be shown that the maximum
value of C1/2 L /CD occurs at a velocity given by:

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 Endurance
• Endurance of a propeller – Driven Aircraft

• Endurance vs weight ratio for propeller driven aircraft

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 Endurance – Contd..
• Endurance of a Jet – Powered Aircraft

• For maximum endurance, the flight must be performed at the

velocity that produces maximum L/D. This already has been
considered in connection with the range of a propeller-driven
aircraft
• and the velocity that meets this condition as given previously.
This velocity varies as the weight of the aircraft decreases.
The maximum value of L/D is provided before.

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 Gliding Flight
• The ability of the air vehicle to glide is measured by its sink
rate and is easy to determine using the equations of motion
or balance.
• With the power off (T = 0), the two equations of motion
become:

• Dividing the first equation by the second, the tangent of the

glide angle is determined.

• The tangent of the glide angle is the reciprocal of L/D. The

sink rate is stated as a positive number, so if the velocity is
known, the sink rate becomes:

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 Gliding Flight – Contd..
• The units of the sink rate will be the same as those of V.
• Most UAVs do not use a lot of power during approach and,
because of their high L/D’s, approach at rather shallow angles.
This means that copious amounts of runway or cleared space
is necessary even for net landings.
• One way to overcome this deficiency, so that small fields can
be used for recovery, is to reduce the L/D during the approach
with the use of drag producing devices, such as flaps.
• These devices lead to additional system complexity and cost.
• Another way is by deploying a parafoil, which inherently has a
low L/D.

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 Summary
• The basic aerodynamics equations are a powerful way to calculate
key performance characteristics in terms of the design
characteristics and mission profiles of the AV.
• They are the tools with which an aeronautical engineer designs
any aircraft. This chapter provides examples of their power by
showing how very basic equations can be put together to estimate
important characteristics, such as range and endurance.
• The power of the basic equations extends to all areas of the
design. Calculations of this sort are central to the whole design
process.
• These and other similar equations are used to tradeoff between
AV weight, fuel load, mission payload weight, wing size and
design, and all of the other factors that go into a complete AV
design.
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