Establishing relation between coefficient of drag and wing sweep angle of an airplane

using a drop test with accelerometer

Aryan Chaudhary, Devansh Dhrafani, Gattem Sai Govind, Vadranam
Manikanth, Vishal Prabu, Meenakshi Viswanathan, Aravinda Raghavan∗
BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

(Dated: July 19, 2020)

Wing Sweep Angle and Coefficient of Drag are important parameters for any aircraft design. In
this experiment, we hypothesize that within bounds of experimental error, there exists a relation
between Wing Sweep angle and Coefficient of Drag for any aircraft design. Traditional methods for
finding drag coefficient like Wind Tunnel testing and CFD Simulations are tricky to set up, time
consuming and expensive-both cost wise and computationally. Instead, we use a low cost, easy to
setup drop test method to calculate the drag coefficient of the model aircraft. A model aeroplane
with an accelerometer attached in its nose was dropped from a fixed height. The accelerometer data
was then analysed to find the Coefficient of Drag. The same experiment is performed with various
Sweep Angles to find a relation between Sweep Angle and Drag Coefficient.
Items used: Wooden planks, screws, nylon thread, accelerometer components, solder, thermocol planes, surgical
blades, and high speed camera.

I. INTRODUCTION

The wings of aircraft are bent backwards [1] (forward

occasionally) at an angle from its root rather than
perpendicular to the fuselage. The angle with respect to
normal of the fuselage at which the wing is bent is called
the sweep angle. Sweeping the wing back increases
the critical mach number and delivers higher lift-drag
ratio, thereby improving performance. Early fighter jets
capable of flying at subsonic speeds benefited greatly Fig 1: Coefficient of Drag is constant for Reynolds
with the introduction of swept wings. The amount of number range of 103 − 105 [4]
drag is directly proportional to the amount of air that
is flowing perpendicular to the wing or airflow in the The height of the experiment was chosen such that
plane of air-foil cross-section. This drag can be reduced drag coefficient is independent of Reynold’s number and
by introducing Sweep Angle. When sweep angle is the model airplane does not attain terminal velocity. We
introduced, the amount of air flowing perpendicular to used an accelerometer (MPU 6050) to measure the in-
the wing–that is the span-wise component of the air stantaneous acceleration of the airplane as it is dropped.
flow– decreases, which results in the wave-drag on the
wing and consequently the plane decreasing.

A typical airplane design process takes around 2.5

million Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations
before an acceptable result is obtained.[2] Wind Tunnel
experiments are difficult and expensive to set up. We
implement a simple, cost effective drop test method to
find the Coefficient of Drag (Cd). Such drop tests have
been conducted earlier to estimate Cd of rockets.[3] In
this experiment, A model airplane is dropped vertically
from a certain height. It has been observed that the
drag coefficient of any object is almost constant in the Fig 2: Experimental setup for drop test
range 1000 - 100000 Reynold’s number range.[4]
The sensor was fixed in the nose of the airplane. With
the obtained acceleration vs time data, one can extrap-
olate to find the terminal velocity of the falling air-
plane and thus get the Coefficient of Drag for the model
∗ Performed under supervision of Physics Department,BITS Pi- airplane.[3] This experiment was repeated for different
lani, Hyderabad Campus. sweep angles of the model airplane to find the relation

between Wing Sweep angle and Coefficient of Drag.
[1] S. Siouris and N. Qin, Study of the effects of wing sweep
on the aerodynamic performance of a blended wing body
aircraft, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical En-
gineers, Part G: Journal of Aerospace Engineering 221,
47 (2007).
[2] A. Jirasek, Vortex Generator Modeling and its Application
2
II. REFERENCES
to Optimal Control of Airflow in Inlet, Ph.D. thesis (2006).
[3] S. P. Fors and C. Nord, Determination of aerodynamic
drag coefficients using a drop test with a wireless ac-
celerometer and its application to model rockets, Amer-
ican Journal of Physics 87, 714–719 (2019).
[4] F. M. White, Fluid Mechanics, seventh ed. (McGraw Hill
Education, 2011) pg 500.