Advanced UAV Aerodynamics, Flight Stability and Control

This chapter focuses on unmanned aircraft aerodynamics and flight stability, and control. It addresses fundamental principles of aerodynamics, flight stability and control and forms a knowledge base for the student of aerospace engineering. The chapter includes classroom problems. Aerodynamic analysis of novel concepts in UAV design can be conducted using a number of methodologies that range from traditional aerodynamic theories to modern computational fluid dynamics (CFD). CFD consists of a combination of aerodynamic analysis and optimization of the airfoil geometry for a given set of constraints. To ensure good aerodynamic performance for a range of fight speeds and conditions, multi-objective optimization is preferable to single-objective optimization. One of the most prominent turbulence models, the (k-epsilon) model, is implemented in most general purpose CFD codes. The (k-epsilon) model is stable, numerically robust and accurate, and has excellent predictive capability.