Aerodynamic characteristics of a quadcopter

with propellers
Cite as: AIP Conference Proceedings 2351, 040053 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0051951
Published Online: 24 May 2021

P. A. Polivanov and A. A. Sidorenko

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© 2021 Author(s).
 Aerodynamic Characteristics of a Quadcopter with
Propellers
P. A. Polivanova) and A. A. Sidorenkob)

Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, 630090, Novosibirsk, Russia

a)
Corresponding author: polivanov@itam.nsc.ru
b)
sindr@itam.nsc.com

Abstract. The characteristics performance of the small quadcopter was measured in a wind tunnel. The effect of
propellers on the lift and drag of the quadcopter frame has been found. The quadcopter descent stage was investigated
numerically by the RANS approximation. The calculations allowed determining the interference between the from the
propeller with the quadcopter frame element. A significant effect of the quadcopter frame on the propeller characteristics
in the vortex ring state was found.

INTRODUCTION
When flying a quadcopter one or more of propellers may be damaged. This reason of this can be due to a
collision with a foreign body. Another reason may be the fatigue failure of the propeller due to significant unsteady
loads arising on the fixed pitch propeller in the oblique flow [1]. To calculate the optimal trajectory to ensure the
safest landing of a quadcopter with some damage, it is necessary to know its aerodynamic characteristics of
quadcopter [2]. Numerical calculation of the aerodynamic characteristics of a quadcopter is a difficult task. The
reason for this is the poorly streamlined design of most existing quadcopters, which leads to complex, difficult to
simulate flows [3]. The reason for this is that the design of the quadcopter consists of a combination of blunt bodies,
which significantly complicates the simulation of such flows [2]. Therefore experimental data are a more reliable
way to found the aerodynamic characteristics [4]. But the disadvantage of the experimental results is the small
amount of measured data. Numerical analysis will solve this problem [5]. So CFD simulation can be used to
improve understanding of the flow characteristics around the propellers. The goal of this work is to determine the
aerodynamic characteristics of the quadcopter and its elements, to determine the influence of the quadcopter
propellers in the autorotation state on the aerodynamic characteristics of quadcopter, to study the interaction of the
stream from the propellers with the frame of quadcopter.

EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL SETUP

The experiment was carried out in an SS-19 NSTU wind tunnel with an elliptical open test section 800x600 mm
and a length of 1 m. Three-component force balance were used to measure the forces and moments acting on the
quadcopter. A photo of quadcopter installed in wind tunnel is shown in Fig. 1. During the experiment two positions
of the quadcopter were considered: in the direction of flow (\ = 0q) and flying sideways (\ = 90q). In addition to
measuring the total forces and moments acting on the quadcopter the forces acting on each propeller were measured.
To carry out these measurements four load cells elements were installed on the quadcopter frame. Each load cells
measured the force of each propeller directed normal to the quadcopter frame. The studies were carried out without
propellers and with propellers. The experiments were performed on two quadcopter frames with dimensions b = 180
and 310 mm. The quadcopters used three-blade propellers in sizes 4045 and 7045 respectively.

International Conference on the Methods of Aerophysical Research (ICMAR 2020)

AIP Conf. Proc. 2351, 040053-1–040053-7; https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0051951
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-4099-9/$30.00

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 FIGURE 1. Photo of a quadcopter in a wind tunnel

(a) (b)
FIGURE 2. Mean pressure distribution on the surface of the propeller and element of frame (a – case #2, b – case #3)

The descent stage was investigated numerically. The calculations were carried out for a three-bladed propeller
7045. The effect of the quadcopter frame on the flow around the propeller was studied in a simplified setting. For
this purpose the simplified arms of the quadcopter frame were added to the computational geometry (Fig. 2). In total
three cases were considered: 1) without a quadcopter frame element; 2) straight arms of the frame 20 mm wide and
15 mm height from the propeller, 3) the expanding arms of the frame with a width of 20 mm near the center of
propeller, opening angle 20q and 15 mm height from the propeller mm.
In the simulation were performed by the Finite Volume Method in the Ansys Fluent software. Calculations were
made on an unstructured tetragonal grid with a prismatic mesh near the boundary layer. In the simulation the RANS
based on the Spalart–Allmaras turbulence model was used. The value of the y+ on the wall was approximately 25.
The size of the numerical domain exceeded the diameter of the propeller by 15 times. The computational mesh was
approximately 9 million cells. The numerical simulations were performed at different rotation speed of the propeller,
different velocity of the incoming flow and different yaw angles (T).

RESULTS
When calculating the dimensionless coefficients half the area of a circle with a radius r = b/2 was used as a
reference area. An example of the lift and drag coefficient for a quadcopter with dimension b = 180 mm is shown in

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Fig. 3. The experiment was carried out at an incident velocity of 15 m/s. The positive and negative ranges of angles
of attack were studied in different experiments, which explains the presence of two curves for each cases, which
intersecting near the of zero angle of attack. The lift graph can be roughly divided by two parts. In the zone of small
angles of attack (from -10q to 10q) a slight change of the lift force was found. For angles |D| > 10q more intense
changes of lift force was happen. For both zones the change in CL versus the angle of attack is close to linear. It is
most likely that the reason for the change of zones is arise of powerful trailing vortices from the quadcopter frames
for angles of attack over 10 degrees. The addition of propellers increases the lift. Note that the propellers were in
autorotation state. The rotation of the propellers began at angles of attack |D| > 15-20q. The beginning of the rotation
of the propellers was not accompanied by a significant change of the lifting and drags force. The resistance value
(CD) is comparable to the value of the CL coefficient. The addition of propellers increases the drag force. In Fig. 4 it
can be found of a quadcopter drag polar. It is clearly seen that the addition of propellers leads to an increase the drag
and a decrease of the lift-to-drag ratio of the quadcopter. The polar graph clearly shows the presence of a clear non-
monotonicity of the data in the zone of positive angles of attack.

(a) (b)
FIGURE 3. Lift (a) and Drag (b) coefficient vs AOA

FIGURE 4. Drag polar of quadcopter

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 To analyze the non-monotonicity of the drag polar is consider the coefficients of forces directed perpendicular to
the quadcopter frame (Cy) and along it (Cx). The normal force plot in Fig. 5a is close to the CL distribution, since
small angles of attack were studied and the influence of Cx on CL is small. The distribution of Cx from the angle of
attack is shown in Fig. 5b. The figure clearly shows a significant difference in the dependences in the zone of
positive and negative angles of attack. The reason of this is that the windward and leeward parts of the quadcopter
are significantly different. On the leeward side of the quadcopter there are many addition elements (antennas,
receivers, etc.) that are shaded with increasing angle of attack, which leads to a drop of the Cx. In this case the
addition of propellers only leads to the shift of the Cx coefficient. It means that the propellers in autorotation state
have a little effect on the flow around the quadcopter.

(a) (b)
FIGURE 5. Normal (a) and longitudinal (b) force coefficients vs AOA

Figures 6-8 show an example of the calculation results obtained for the 7045 propeller for the descent state with
an incoming velocity of 10 m/s and a rotor speed of 200 Hz. Figure 6 shows the thrust on the propeller and a single
blade at a vertical descent and descent with an angle T = 45q. It is clearly seen that changing the angle T from 0q to
45q leads to a double increase of the thrust. The reason for this is the presence of a state close to that of a vortex ring
state at these conditions. At a vertical descent there are significant local angles of attack, which leads to significant
flow separations on the blades and accordingly a drop of thrust. At the increase of T to 45q leads to the appearance
of a cyclical change of the flow parameters and accordingly the forces on the blade (Fig. 6d). In this case at some
time of the period of the cycle the angles of attack on the blades decrease to state without separation flow. As a
result the lifting force increases significantly. But the presence of both separated and non-separating regimes leads to
a significant change of the force on the blade during its rotation. This will lead to variable loads that are more
significant than in the horizontal or lift flight modes [1]. Note that for vertical descent ( T = 0) changes of the forces
on the blade during its rotation are also found (Fig. 6c). This can be explained by the unsteadiness of the separation
flow arising on the blade.
Figure 6 also demonstrates the effect of quadcopter frame on propeller characteristics. For vertical descent
(T = 0) the addition of the frame arm leads to increase the thrust on the propeller. This can be explained by the
partial destruction of the vortex ring state, due to the wake generated behind the frame element. As a result the
characteristic of the propeller is increases significantly. Since the growth of T from 0 to 45q leads to the destruction
of the vortex ring state the frame elements already lead to a drop in thrust. This is due to a decrease of local
velocities due to the wake behind the arm.
Figure 7 shows the component of the force on an arm of the quadcopter and directed along the normal to frame.
It is clearly seen that with an increase of the area of the arm the value of force also increases. It is interesting to note
that for a small element (case 2) a change of the T does not lead to a change of the force and for a wide element
(case 3) the increase of the T leads to a significant increase of the force. Note that the value of the force on the arm
becomes compared to the force generated by the propeller. This data show that the forces generated on the arms of
the quadcopter can be used to stabilize it in case of damage to the propeller. Since the forces and moments in the
descent mode on the elements of the quadcopter frame are comparable to the forces on the propellers.

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 (a) (b)

(c) (d)
FIGURE 6. Thrust vs time for different test cases (a, b – propeller characteristics, c, d – blade characteristics)

FIGURE 7. Normal component of force on the frame vs time

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 Figure 8 shows the moment of the propeller at different states of descent and the effect of the frame elements on
it. In fact the graphs show the power of the propeller, since the rotation speed for all curves is the same in the data
presented. At the vertical descent (Fig. 8a) the addition of frame elements leads to a more significant increase of the
moment than the thrust of the propellers (Fig. 6a). For the case T = 45q (Fig. 8b) the addition of frame elements also
leads to an increase of the moment, while the propeller thrust slightly decreases (Fig. 6b). At the same time the use
of a wider arm (case 3) does not lead to a significant increase of the moment on the propeller. Thus the interaction of
the propeller with the quadcopter frame element leads to a significant increase of the power necessary for rotation on
the propeller.

(a) (b)

FIGURE 8. Propeller momentum vs time for different test cases (a – T = 0q, b – T = 45q)

CONCLUSION
The aerodynamic characteristics of quadcopters were found experimentally. The effect of propellers in the
autorotation state on the aerodynamic characteristics of quadcopters is found.
The interference of the stream of the propeller with the arm of the quadcopter in the descent state was studied
numerically. It has been shown that the elements of the quadcopter frame can be used to destroy the vortex ring
state, which leads to a significant increase of thrust on the propeller. The significant effect of the flow separation on
the propeller at the descent stage is shown. Analysis of the calculated data shows the qualitative possibility of using
the quadcopter frame elements to stabilize the quadcopter at descent in the event of damage to one of the propellers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The reported study was funded by RFBR and Novosibirsk Oblast according to the research project No. 19-48-
540017 r_a.

REFERENCES
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Series 1404 (IOP Publishing, 2019), pp. 012095(5). doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1404/1/012095
2. P. A. Polivanov, A. A. Sidorenko, “Comparison of a quadcopter and an airplane as a means of measuring
atmospheric parameters”, in International Conference on the Methods of Aerophysical Research
(ICMAR 2018), AIP Conference Proceedings 2027, edited by V. M. Fomin (American Institute of Physics,
Melville, NY, 2018), pp. 040077. doi.org/10.1063/1.5065345

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3. P. V. Diaz and S. Yoony, “High-Fidelity Computational Aerodynamics of Multi-Rotor Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles“, in AIAA Aerospace Sciences 2018 Meeting. AIAA 2018-1266
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Characteristics of a Quadcopter”, in AIAA AVIATION 2019 Forum. AIAA 2019-2973
5. D. V. Khotyanovsky, A. N. Kudryavtsev, Journal of Applied Mechanics and Technical Physics, 58, 826–83
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