High-Fidelity Rotor Design Based on Blade Element Momentum Theory

UAVs have experienced explosive growth in recent years leading to the need for a rotor design approach that can be computed rapidly with limited resources. The authors have created a new design method that provides high fidelity and low computational cost using blade element momentum theory, which is now popular among engineers. In this work, the prediction accuracy of the thrust performance was significantly improved as a result of the aerodynamic force measurements in hover. This result showed high validity for Re = 2.0 × 10^4 and above, where the viscous effects were negligible, according to the investigation of the rotor wakes using the PIV technique.