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Engineering Commons

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Mechanical Engineering

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Brigham Young University

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2022

Urban air mobility

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Effects Of Rotor-Airframe Interaction On The Aeromechanics And Wake Of A Quadcopter In Forward Flight, Denis-Gabriel Caprace, Andrew Ning, Philippe Chatelain, Grégoire Winckelmans Sep 2022

Effects Of Rotor-Airframe Interaction On The Aeromechanics And Wake Of A Quadcopter In Forward Flight, Denis-Gabriel Caprace, Andrew Ning, Philippe Chatelain, Grégoire Winckelmans

Faculty Publications

From small drones to large Urban Air Mobility vehicles, the market of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is currently booming. Modern VTOL designs feature a variety of configurations involving rotors, lifting surfaces and bluff bodies. The resulting aerodynamics are highly impacted by the interactions between those components and their wakes. This has consequences on the aircraft performance and on the downstream wake. Studying the effects of those interactions through CFD can inform the development of cheaper numerical models. In this work, we focus on the interaction between rotors and bluff bodies based on the example of a generic quadcopter …


Large Eddy Simulation Of The Wakes Of Three Urban Air Mobility Vehicles, Denis-Gabriel Caprace, Andrew Ning May 2022

Large Eddy Simulation Of The Wakes Of Three Urban Air Mobility Vehicles, Denis-Gabriel Caprace, Andrew Ning

Faculty Publications

Recent advances in urban air mobility have driven the development of many new VTOL concepts. These vehicles often feature original designs and futuristic shapes. Due to their novelty, the wake characteristics of such aircraft are unknown. However, large wake-induced velocities, should they exist, may be dangerous for any other vehicle evolving in their close proximity. Therefore, improved knowledge about the wakes of VTOL vehicles is needed to guarantee the safety of urban air mobility operations. In this work, we study the wake of three VTOL aircraft in cruise by means of large eddy simulation. We present a two-stage numerical procedure …