YANG Jinglong,XIONG Junhui,DING Kaiyan, et al. Aerodynamic shape design and simulation analysis of motor arms for compound-wing eVTOL aircraft[J]. Advances in Aeronautical Science and Engineering.(in Chinese)
YANG Jinglong,XIONG Junhui,DING Kaiyan, et al. Aerodynamic shape design and simulation analysis of motor arms for compound-wing eVTOL aircraft[J]. Advances in Aeronautical Science and Engineering.(in Chinese)DOI:
Aerodynamic shape design and simulation analysis of motor arms for compound-wing eVTOL aircraft
Motor arms of eVTOL aircraft suffer flow separation and vortex recirculation during cruise and VTOL, degrading lift-to-drag characteristics and increasing power loss. For a 150-kg-class, eight-rotor, twin-ducted pusher eVTOL, a CATIA macro-based framework was developed for motor-arm surface modeling, and key parameters were extracted for parametric reshaping. Fluent simulations compared modified and unmodified arms under cruise and VTOL conditions. The modified arm suppressed flow separation and improved airflow attachment. At 4° angle of attack (maximum aircraft lift-to-drag ratio), it increased lift by 104.05%, reduced drag by 13.52%, and raised lift-to-drag ratio by 135.95% over the unmodified arm. In VTOL at the same rotational speed, it reduced vortices and recirculation, giving higher total rotor lift and output power than the unmodified state; maximum increases reached 3.71% and 2.93%, respectively, across propeller-arm spacings. These results confirm the necessity and effectiveness of motor-arm reshaping for drag reduction.
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