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Computational fluid dynamics study of unconventional air vehicle configurations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2016

R. Ramamurti
Affiliation:
Laboratory for Computational Physics and Fluid Dynamics, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, USA
W. Sandberg
Affiliation:
Laboratory for Computational Physics and Fluid Dynamics, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, USA
P. Vaiana
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, USA
J. Kellogg
Affiliation:
Tactical Electronic Warfare Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, USA
D. Cylinder
Affiliation:
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA

Abstract

Two unconventional micro air vehicles developed by the Naval Research Laboratory are described. One of the vehicles employs flapping wings which is inspired by the flight of birds or insects but does not copy it directly. The second vehicle is a stop-rotor hybrid vehicle employing a pair of single blade, rotary/fixed wing panels, attached at their roots to separate coaxial shafts. An unstructured grid based incompressible flow solver, called feflo, is used to simulate the flow past these novel configurations in order to determine the flight characteristics of these vehicles.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 2005 

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