Hi Guys,here is a quick and dirty mock of my ducted wing design. The idea is to create the wing from rapid prototyped poly carbonate with a carbon fibre spar bonded to it. The duct is built into the design and feeds air over the wing from a ducted fan. The RP machine builds wall sections to 1-0.5mm and can create a structure with complicated ribs and internal structures in one go.what do you think of the concept?Any idea of where I can find a good aerofoil shape suitable for a low speed UAV?regardsOliver
If the purpose of this design is to drastically decrease a take-off distance you may want to re think your design. Ducted fan thrust is proportional to the velocity of the air at the inlet, so you probably will not see significant effects at take off speeds. Not to mention that the design as is will produce turbulent airflow (Going of the picture posted by Chris).
If you really care about a short take-off distance, design a plane with a low stall speed (~10 mph), try thrust vectoring, even flaps would work. The problem with flaps if that it will increase the drag significantly so you will need a large propulsion system.
You appear to have got quite a few people going with this one and all though I like the ambitious design, I have to agree with Ian, ducted fans are greedy on power and getting the flow equal for the length of the wing will almost certainly involve varying the size of the individual apertures all along the wing to the tip, which will be quite a challenge! Air, like water and electricity will always take the easiest route. Thin symmetrical sections, are generally used for speed rather than lift and the TSR2 was a supersonic aircraft, so I doubt a copy of that profile would suite your purpose. Try looking to a more conventional airfoil design for your AP platform, leading edge slats and trailing edge flaps are both good for slow flight ( take a look at the Fieseler Storch ). I have 30-40 or so wings, all of different profile, chord, root thickness, span etc for various different weather conditions, lifting capability and terrain and probably 15 of these are made up of the Clark Y section. This airfoil has a thickness of 11.7 percent and is flat on the lower surface from 30 percent of the cord back, it has excellent lifting capabilities, very forgiving stall characteristics and will happily fly backwards if the wind is blowing strong enough.
i would be glad to run some numbers through xfoil and javafoil for you just give me your specs ei wing cord,span, plane form, desiered stall ,cruise,top speeds airplane weight and any other perameters you already have nailed down .i can calculate stall speed ,lift, drag(not "highly" accurate) and produce poler coordant files from any known airfoil or most you can draw . this looks like a fun challenge. from the face of it it should produce some lift but basicly the top of the airfoil aft of the exaust of the duct will be operating at a much higher reynols number the the rest if the wing section .any way i digress., send me some specs and also i have a cad system so if you want to send me a drawing you can.
Nice wing design, but (putting moderator hat on), there's absolutely no need to share a single picture in an attached Word file. Please just embed it as a picture in your post, like this:
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If you really care about a short take-off distance, design a plane with a low stall speed (~10 mph), try thrust vectoring, even flaps would work. The problem with flaps if that it will increase the drag significantly so you will need a large propulsion system.
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