Design of Long Range UAVs using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been common in many different fields of use in recent years, and long range UAVs have potential in a variety of application spaces from delivery to reconnaissance to emergency response. This study focuses on potential design of long range UAVs and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of different wing designs. We used Autodesk CFD for simulation and 42 trials of different speeds (from 10 to 200 km/h for both fixed wing and swept wing design) were done. We conclude that swept wing design would have 9% more range compared to fixed wing under the same conditions. Thus adapting the design should help when designing new UAVs.