Design of a shrouded rotor with optimal thrust and energy efficiency in unmanned aerial vehicles

This study aims to improve the energy efficiency and increase the thrust power of an unmanned aerial vehicles by implementing shrouded rotors. First, a shroud design was created based on previous studies into shroud lip design and diffuser configurations. Three parameters, the leading-edge lip radius (LLR), diffuser length (DL), and diffuser angle (DA) were varied and each configuration was simulated in ANSYS CFX to obtain the theoretical thrust. After simulations, the configuration with the largest thrust was fabricated and tested at a variety of rotative speeds, measuring the thrust and energy consumption across each run. The simulations were able to determine that thrust increased with increasing LLR and DL and decreasing DA. The physical test in turn showed that at low RPMs, the thrust increase was more significant but the rotor consumed more energy; at higher RPMs, the thrust gain was lower but the rotor was also more energy-efficient. © 2018 IEEE