Ground effect of a multirotor drone (uav)

Using SimScale Fluid Flow / CFD
1

Hey guys

I am new to the whole aerodynamics field, let alone simscale.
I have a few questions reagrding what i want to do, any help would be appreciated.

I built a Hexarotor drone to be used in my master thesis project. The drone is to be used to track and follow a vehicle and record video for aerodynamic analysis.

Long story short, i would like to visualize the ground effect of the drone when its hovering at different heights from the ground. How do i go about doing that?

Thanks.

2

Hi @hommsy,

you could check out the resources of the SimScale Drone Workshop from earlier this year. It contains one session on the propeller aerodynamics which you could reuse for your project!

Hope that helps,

David

3

hey @dheiny
Thank you for the reply. I did take a look at the propeller aerodynamics.

Im not sure its what im looking for.

I want to study the ground effect of 6 propellers . In other words, i want to visualize how the flow looks like when the drone is hovering at 1m with a solid ground under it. How far will the flow reach in x and y direction (not z, the height)? When i change the height, how will the flow be in the x and y direction?

any suggestions for that?

4

Hi @hommsy,

yes, that’s definitely doable. Check out Session 1: https://simscale-2.wistia.com/medias/z110b3uzpo

There it’s done with one rotor, you’ll have 6 of those - but conceptually it will be the same simulation setup.

Best,

David

5

Hi…i am a new user here. I want to know the ground effect of 6 propellers . Actually, i want to visualize how the flow looks like when the drone is hovering at 1m with a solid ground under it. How far will the flow reach in x and y direction ?

low-cost pcb assembly

6

Hi @JaseSerre,

could you upload a model of your drone? That would be great so that we can start working on your drone immediately. :wink:

Also consider the Drone workshops offered by SimScale in the past

• Drone Workshop (2015) - SimScale CAE Forum

as well as this thread which talks about the post processing:

• Session 1: Aerodynamics in Drone Simulation

Please let me know if that helped you and feel free to ask anything you want at any time.

Cheers and happy SimScaling!

Jousef

7

@JaseSerre This is exactly what i want to do. Unfortunately i had no luck/time to finish what i started. If you do make some good progress please share it here :slight_smile: