Experimental Investigation on Hover Performance of a Ducted Coaxial-Rotor UAV

This paper presents experimental investigations on aerodynamic performance of a ducted coaxial-rotor system to evaluate its potential application as a small unmanned aerial vehicle (SUAV). Aimed at determining the influence of design parameters (rotor spacing, tip clearance and rotor position within the duct) on hover performance, a variety of systematic measurements for several correlative configurations (single/coaxial rotor with or without a duct) in terms of thrust and torque, as well as power, were conducted in an attempt to identify a better aerodynamic configuration. The experimental results for the coaxial-rotor system indicated that varying rotor spacing affected the thrust-sharing proportion between the two rotors, but this had no significant effect on the propulsive efficiency. The optimal H/R ratio was identified as being 0.40, due to a larger thrust and stronger stability in the case of identical rotation speeds. As for the ducted single-rotor configuration, the tip clearance played a dominant role in improving its thrust performance, especially for smaller gaps (δ≤0.015R), while the rotor position made subordinate contributions. The maximum performance was obtained with the rotor located at the P₅ position (0.31C_d from the duct lip), which resulted in an enhancement of approximately 20% in power loading over the isolated single rotor. When the coaxial rotors were surrounded within the duct, the system thrust for a given power degraded with the increasing rotor spacing, which was mainly attributed to the upper rotor suffering from heavier leakage losses. And hence, the ducted coaxial-rotor system with S₁ spacing had the best propulsion efficiency and hover performance with a figure of merit of 0.61.