Coupled CFD/MBD Method for a Tilt Tri-rotor UAV in Conversion of Flight Modes

Abstract

Aerodynamic characteristics of tilt-rotor UAVs are usually simulated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) only, and the fuselage/wing is fixed in simulations. It is difficult for this method to consider drastic changes of the aerodynamic forces and flowfield originating from conversion of flight modes. And during flight-mode conversions, the rapid changes of postures of tilt-rotors will unavoidably bring great influence on aerodynamic characteristics. In addition, the simulation of the control system for flight-mode conversions cannot be realised by CFD only. In this paper, considering the motion of the fuselage/wing and the dynamic tilting process of tilt-rotors, a new computational method by coupling CFD and multi-body dynamics (MBD) is presented for flight-mode conversions of a tilt tri-rotor UAV with the large-space computational domain. The numerical results validate the feasibility of the coupling method and also show effects of the fuselage/wing motion and flight-mode conversions to aerodynamic characteristics of the tilt tri-rotor UAV.

KEYWORDS:

• CFD
• MBD
• tilt tri-rotor UAV
• conversion of flight modes
• aerodynamic characteristics

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11832009), the Lotus Scholars Program in Hunan Province of China (No. XJT2015408). Meanwhile, the authors would like to appreciate the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 11832009], the Lotus Scholars Program in Hunan Province of China [No. XJT2015408].