生物の柔軟・微細構造を規範とした高性能型回転翼の創製

抄録

Multicopter type unmanned aerial vehicle, called drone, has great potentials for various missions such as surveillance and delivery, and it is of great importance to enhance the robustness or to suppress the aerodynamic noise. We have been investigating the bioinspired rotary wing with flexibility or microstructure in order to achieve such high performance rotary wing. Here, we report the development of low-noise rotary wing inspired by feathers of owl that is known to achieve silent flight with microstructure on the feather. The various structures such as serrations were attached to the propellers for drone, and its acoustic performance is evaluated by measuring the noise when the drone is hovering. Through the experiment and computational fluid dynamic analyses, it is found that the attachment of a structure at trailing edge can suppress the noise significantly, while keeping the aerodynamic efficiency.