I am running some simulations to determine in-flight aerodynamic forces on the body of a drone I am designing. I would like to include the effects of the propellers without directly modeling them, since I have experimental data from bench tests of the propellers.
I am thinking about modeling the propellers as disks, and applying pressure boundary conditions on either side of the disks to generate the same forces that I found in my tests. Does anyone have suggestions for how I could improve my simulation?
did you already have a look at the workshop SimScale offered a while ago?
Some of the videos of the webinar might cover what you want to do. As far as I know we did not model the propellers as disks but you could try it with the approach you mentioned
If you have any questions, feel free to ask any time!
interesting project you’re working on! To make sure I understand correctly: You’re working on structural simulations of the drone body, correct? Not aerodynamic flow sims?
Hi @dheiny ,
Thank you for your help. I am working on aerodynamic flow simulations. I would like to determine the lift, drag and pitching moment vs. angle of attack.
The drone workshop was helpful, but I would be interested to hear any other suggestions you have.