Experimental investigation of the aerodynamics performance of an unmanned aerial vehicle rotorblade in non-ideal conditions.

The purpose of the Urban Air Mobility is to provide a safe and efficient transportation system to improve daily life in large urban contexts. The main applications can vary from air taxy to last-mile delivery. In this context, drones open a wide range of new opportunities that were unthinkable decades ago, with applications that cover many fields, from military to agriculture and healthcare. The majority of the applications cited above are covered by means of small rotary-wing drones. These architectures are characterized by low thrust loading and poor efficiency due to the regime in which they operate, characterized by predominant viscous effects. For these reasons, in this thesis will be investigated both numerically, by means of CFD, and experimentally, by means of Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and load cells, the performance of a small-scale propeller in hover and in cross-flow in order to understand the mechanisms of performance degradation and the effects on the wake flowfield.