Medium sized drones and UAV are getting wider and wider commercial use, and this is likely to increase with the development of U-Space and advanced air mobility. As all of the vehicles/aircraft are expected to be electrically powered, significant emphasis is placed on devleoping highligh efficient (performacen wise) propellers to mitigate the limitis in efficiency of battery-powered propulsion compared to combustion engines.
The project covers the analysis of the aerodynamics of a standard UAV propeller using unsteady simulations to estimate the thrust and efficiency, followed by the analysis of a propeller with bio-inspired modified leading edges for improved stall performance.
Initial steady simulations have shown good agreement with experimental data for the classical baseline model.