On the flight performance impact of landing gear drag reduction methods for unmanned air vehicles

  • 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.

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Metadaten
Author:Falk GöttenORCiD, Felix FingerORCiD, Marc Havermann, Carsten BraunORCiD, Francisco Gomez, C. Bill
DOI:https://doi.org/10.25967/480058
Parent Title (German):Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2018
Publisher:DGLR
Place of publication:Bonn
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of Completion:2018
Date of the Publication (Server):2018/11/06
Length:11 S.
Link:https://doi.org/10.25967/480058
Zugriffsart:weltweit
Institutes:FH Aachen / Fachbereich Luft- und Raumfahrttechnik
collections:Verlag / DGLR