Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Development Of An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle For The Measurement Of Turbulence In The Atmospheric Boundary Layer, Brandon M. Witte, Robert F. Singler, Sean C. C. Bailey

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper describes the components and usage of an unmanned aerial vehicle developed for measuring turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer. A method of computing the time-dependent wind speed from a moving velocity sensor data is provided. The physical system built to implement this method using a five-hole probe velocity sensor is described along with the approach used to combine data from the different on-board sensors to allow for extraction of the wind speed as a function of time and position. The approach is demonstrated using data from three flights of two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) measuring the lower atmospheric …