Aerodynamic effects of UAV body design inspired by living creatures and investigation of the effects of blockage rates in the wind tunnel

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are aircraft commonly used in military and civilian sectors, increasingly preferred over conventional aircraft due to their tactical, financial, operational advantages, and produced with electric and internal combustion engines. The rapidly evolving Aviation Industry in Turkey and globally endeavors to meet the growing demand for UAVs. Research in this field has focused on increasing payload capacity, reducing overall weight, and fuel consumption. UAV body designs, inspired by natural organisms and their aerodynamic properties, stand as a potential avenue for enhancing factors such as range, fuel efficiency, and payload capacity. This study investigates the impact of body designs inspired by natural organisms on the forces acting on UAVs. Designs influenced by the body properties of catfish were analyzed at a speed of 28 m/s, revealing that the most optimal design corresponds to the pinelodus fish. Verification studies conducted in wind tunnel experiments with models based on this design demonstrated a similarity of 7% with analyses performed using computational fluid dynamics software. Keywords: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, aerodynamics, Bio-inspired, Catfish, wind tunnels, Blockage effects