Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV): An Aerodynamics Optimized Design

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have played more and more important roles, not only in military, but also in civil applications nowadays. UAV differs than normal aircraft due to different aerodynamic characteristics. Studying UAV aerodynamic leads to an optimized successful design. Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAV) are smaller versions of UAV, with lower Reynolds number and lower weight.
The purpose of this project is to perform a technical study on aerodynamic characteristic of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAV) at different Angles of Attack (AOA) and with varying wing shapes and areas if necessary. The background study consists of understanding of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAV), forces of flight, lift and drag coefficient. The literature review summarizes research of UAV problems since the invention, optimization of aerodynamic characteristic and numerical testing carried out on aircraft. The methodology planned consists of numerical testing, which is performed by using Computational Fluid Dynamic simulation using the commercial code FLUENT. MAV Design 2 shows improved CL, Lift Coefficient compared to MAV Design 1. The finer meshing shows more accurate result as compared to coarser and uniform meshing. For MAV Design 2 and MAV Design 3, as Angle of Attack increases, CL increases. This shows the same CL versus Angles of Attack relation as the published data. Hence the results show reasonable predictions of lift and drag coefficients.