Aerodynamic Characteristics of Aerofoil Shaped Fuselage UAV Model and Compare With the Conventional Model Using CFD Software

This paper explains the aerodynamic characteristics of an UAV model having aerofoil shaped fuselage and compare the result with that of the conventional cylindrical shaped fuselage UAV model. NACA 4416 cambered aerofoil has been used during design of both the models. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software has been used for design, development and collection of numerical data. This paper explains details of design and investigation of the aerodynamic characteristics of both the UAV models. The proposed ‘Aerofoil Shaped Fuselage’ model has better aerodynamic characteristics than that of the conventional cylindrical model and might be used for many military and civil applications like scientific data gathering, surveillance for law enforcement & homeland security, precision agriculture, forest fire monitoring, geological survey etc in future. The aerodynamic characteristics of both the UAV models have been carried out at two different Reynolds Number (1.37 x 105 and 2.74 x 105 respectively) with different angles of attack from −3° to 18°. The stalling angle of both the design is found about 15° during computational investigation. The aerofoil shaped fuselage configuration might be used for further research and designing of the future UAV.