Experimental and numerical analysis of the effects of different types of quadcopter propeller on directional stability

Nowadays, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are used in many areas such defense, entertainment, agricultural, mapping and transportation. Since there is no need to have a pilot with the aircraft and it allows autonomous driving, the use of these vehicles has started to be seen in other sectors day by day. In addition, electronics equipment and sensors are getting cheaper with development of technology, which have allowed this sector to develop. The most popular of UAV is quadcopter which it has four propellers. A quadcopter with autonomous flight feature was manufactured for this thesis. In this study, Pixhawk 4 flight control board was selected due to its autonomous flight feature. Autonomous flight was planned and carried out by Mission Planer software, which supports the Pixhawk control board. Four different propellers were designed for the determination of directional stability. Among these designed propellers, the most efficient Quadcopter propeller type was investigated in terms of flight time and directional stability. DAE51, MH42, NACA4412 and NLF0115 airfoils, which were reported to perform well at low Reynolds numbers (Re<100.000) as a result of literature research, were selected for this study. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and experimental analysis were conducted to reveal the effects of these designed propellers. ANSYS Fluent simulation calculations were made to determine the accuracy of the propeller calculations. In order to reveal a verifiable method for ANSYS Fluent, validation was made with APC 10x7 that has the blade section and aerodynamic performance in literature. The thrust coefficient obtained with mathematical calculation were 4.41% lower for DAE51, 4.91% for MH42, 5.80% for NACA0115 and 5.94% for NLF0115 compared to CFD. After the results revealed that the quadcopter will create the required thrust, test propellers were printed with a 3D printer. Experimental analysis was carried out in an outdoor environment. In the outdoor tests, the wind effects of the propeller were considered. The effects of the propellers designed as DAE51, MH42, NACA4412 and NLF0115 airfoils were compared to the original propeller of the Quadcopter. As a result of the experiments, it was observed that there were no significant differences in the desired and occurring pitch, roll, yaw angles, height and vibration values. In the first and second experiments, the mean deviations were 0.072 m and 0.05 m for DAE51, 0.019 m and 0.13 m for MH42, 0.031 m and 0.03 m for NACA4412, and 0.022 m and 0.028 for NLF0115, respectively. NACA4412 had the best performance in terms of range and directional stability among all propellers.