@article{GoettenFingerHavermannetal.2018,
  author    = {G{\"o}tten, Falk and Finger, Felix and Havermann, Marc and Braun, Carsten and Gomez, Francisco and Bill, C.},
  title     = {On the flight performance impact of landing gear drag reduction methods for unmanned air vehicles},
  series = {Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2018},
  journal   = {Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2018},
  publisher = {DGLR},
  address   = {Bonn},
  doi       = {10.25967/480058},
  pages     = {11 S.},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {The flight performance impact of three different landing gear configurations on a small, fixed-wing UAV is analyzed with a combination of RANS CFD calculations and an incremental flight performance algorithm. A standard fixed landing gear configuration is taken as a baseline, while the influence of retracting the landing gear or applying streamlined fairings is investigated. A retraction leads to a significant parasite drag reduction, while also fairings promise large savings. The increase in lift-to-drag ratio is reduced at high lift coefficients due to the influence of induced drag. All configurations are tested on three different design missions with an incremental flight performance algorithm. A trade-off study is performed using the retracted or faired landing gear's weight increase as a variable. The analysis reveals only small mission performance gains as the aerodynamic improvements are negated by weight penalties. A new workflow for decision-making is presented that allows to estimate if a change in landing gear configuration is beneficial for a small UAV.},
  language  = {en}
}