A Review of Experimental Approaches for Investigating the Aerodynamic Performance of Drones and Multicopters

Abstract

The growing popularity of multicopters has heightened interest in improving and optimizing UAVs. This has become a major source of inspiration for scholars. Extensive aerodynamics research would result in improved multicopters and boost their appeal to major sectors. Various aspects of the performance of various propeller designs and configurations have been studied by researchers. Various performance metrics have also been investigated and discussed in this paper. Aerodynamic testing of propellers and multicopter designs are discussed in this paper. Numerical simulations are also used widely in the study of drone and multicopter aerodynamics. This method enables high resolution observation on wake propagation and flow visualizations. Nonetheless, as new multicopter concepts are introduced, new aerodynamic challenges emerge in this field. Therefore, more studies need to be done on uncommon but rather important configurations so that these can have a beneficiary effect on the multicopter industry.