Back pressure generated by downwash and crosswind on spatial atomization characteristics during UAV spraying: CFD analysis and verification

Abstract

BACKGROUNDDuring unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) spraying, downwash and crosswind generate back pressure in comprehensive, which changes in spatial atomization characteristics of spraying droplets. However, the process of such atomization characteristics needs to be clarified. This study focuses on the effect of rotor speed and crosswind speed on spatial atomization characteristics. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of the distributions of airflow, back pressure and atomization characteristics were established, and verification was conducted by developing a validation platform.RESULTSThe CFD results indicated that small droplets of 65–130 μm atomized by negative pressure would be coalesced near the nozzle, while large droplets of 390–520 μm atomized by positive pressure would be aggregated further away. Crosswind caused atomization stratification with droplet sizes of approximately 90 μm, 320 μm and 390 μm. When crosswind speed increased from 3 m/s to 6 m/s, the spraying drifted from 0.5 m to 1 m. When rotor speed increased from 2000 RPM to 3000 RPM, droplet distribution was expanded and droplet particle size was more uniform. Verification results demonstrated that the spraying distribution and the droplet size variation were consistent with the CFD.CONCLUSIONSSpatial atomization characteristics were highly correlated with airflow and back pressure. Moreover, as crosswind generated droplet drift and atomization stratification and downwash could improve the uniformity of droplet distribution, spraying performance was superior by enhancing downwash to restrain the adverse effect of crosswind in real applications. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.