Evaluation of a Range of Modeling Approaches for UAV Unsteady Aerodynamics

Abstract

Rotary-wing vehicle development and application have expanded in the past two decades to include a multitude of configurations and operational environments. More efficient approaches to obtain vehicle flight characteristics during design, as well as for modeling and simulation, are needed to augment traditional approaches such as wind tunnel testing and high-fidelity unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (uRANS) computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This effort details the evaluation of the ability of two approaches, solutions to the Lattice- Boltzmann equations and a physics-based reduced-order model, to predict the airloads on an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV), correlated with CFD and wind tunnel tests. The sensitivity of differences observed in these predictions is quantified through a flight simulation code designed for vehicle design and simulation.