Comparative Acoustic Analysis of Modified Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’s Propeller

Abstract

Propeller’s noise reduction is a prime technique in complicated application-oriented unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) because noise is the main targeted input in radar signature. Propeller vortices are vital in the noise generation, so reduction of vortices may chance to reduce the propeller noise. Thus, in this work suggested the various edge modifications on propeller for noise reduction with the help of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis. Totally, six different propellers are modeled by using CATIA, in which the base propeller dimensions are 4.5 inch in pitch and 5  inch in diameter. Primarily, the noise reduction techniques used in this works are located in the various cuts such as saw-tooth cut, curvy cut, aerofoil cut at both leading and trailing edges of a propeller. Acoustic prediction on rotor through CFD is more complicated, so advanced cum flexible simulation tool must be required for the attainment of an acceptable solution. Hence, ANSYS Fluent 16.2 is used for perfect prediction for the comparative acoustic analyses of UAV’s propeller with and without edge modifications, and thereby, the optimized model is suggested for complex UAVs.