Research of Noise in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’s Propeller using CFD

Abstract

The major use and need of the multi-rotor UAV in various fields has increased the importance to study the aerodynamics of multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles such as the secondary flow over the blade, reduction of noise due to the propeller of the UAV, and the optimization of the design on the propeller with more blades to increase efficiency of the UAV. This paper mainly deals with the reduction of noise which is induced by the propeller. Since there is a demand for compact multi-rotor quite UAV as it has a low probability of detection using radar and infrared but as it generates high drive-line noise caused by propeller it cannot be implemented for some critical applications. As a result, an idea is launched to design a propeller with low drive-line noise levels. A methodology is developed to design a low noise as well as efficient propellers for multi-rotor UAVs. The important parameters like blade thickness, tip loss and blade loading are considered in this research. Also, the effects of propeller important parameters such as activity factor, advance ratio are considered. After the finalization of design consideration of UAV’s propeller and the furthermore noise reduction methodologies also studied such as leading-edge comb, trailing edge tuft, and upper surface porosity in order to generate a perfect UAV for military applications. In order to minimize the noise produced by the propeller the idea of modifying the leading-edges is finalized. Computer-AidedDesign of base propeller and propeller with leading-edge modifications has been generated with the help of CATIA V5 and the acoustic analysis for the static base and propellers with leading-edge modifications with different velocities has been simulated using ANSYS Workbench Fluent 16.2. Finally, a propeller with the leading-edge modification has been found to induce low noise.