Flight Testing Small, Electric Powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Flight testing methods are developed to find the drag polar for small UAVs powered by electric motors with fixed-pitch propellers. Wind tunnel testing was used to characterize the propeller-motor efficiency. The drag polar was constructed using data from flight tests. The proposed methods were implemented for a small UAV. A drag polar was found for this aircraft with CDo equal to 0.021, K1 equal to 0.229, and K2 equal to -0.056. This drag polar was then used to find the following performance parameters; maximum velocity, minimum velocity, velocity for maximum range, velocity for maximum endurance, maximum rate of climb, maximum climb angle, minimum turn radius, maximum turn rate, and maximum bank angle. Applications in UAV control and mission planning are also proposed.

Name thesis:degree_name

MS

Grantor dc:publisher

Brigham Young University - Provo

Author dc:creator

• Ostler, Jon N.

• performance
• flight test
• flight testing
• drag polar
• UAV
• small
• electric powered
• electric
• unmanned
• uninhabited
• Mechanical Engineering

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/387

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-1386