Performance Impacts of Wing and Rotor Placement on a Quadrotor Tailsitter

Design modifications to a 3lb variant of DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory's Common Research Configuration (CRC-3) are assessed using simulation tools. To identify areas for improvement, the baseline CRC-3 is analyzed in hover and forward flight, and contributors to overall power consumption are identified, with the rotor drag consuming the greatest amount of power, due to the high rotational speeds required to maintain thrust in the face of the freestream velocity. Potential areas for improvement are identified as: wing airfoil, rotor blade pitch, and rotor orientation. Changing the airfoil has little to no measurable effect on the overall power consumption. Increasing the blade pitch improves cruise performance considerably, but at the cost of hover efficiency, for an overall range improvement of up to 28%. Changing the rotor orientation improves rotor efficiency as well, without substantial cost to hover power consumption, increasing the range by 37% but will require a redesign of the CRC-3 supporting structure to avoid the blades striking the structure. Experimentally determined trim sweeps of pitch and power requirement are shown for the quadrotor, tailsitter, and three different wing incidence angles (10°, 20°, and 40°), showing up to 28% reductions in minimum power.