Aerodynamic study of the dart paper airplane for micro air vehicle application

The aerodynamic design of micro air vehicles is challenging since previous studies have shown that the aerodynamic efficiency of airfoils and wings decreases substantially at low Reynolds-numbers. While many MAV approaches investigate biological designs, here a study is conducted on the aerodynamics of paper airplanes, which fly in the same Reynolds-number range as MAV, but have the advantage of simplicity compared to biological counterparts. Flow visualizations and force measurements in a water tunnel as well as large-eddy simulations are presented on one of the simplest paper airplane design: the dart. The results show that the high-sweep delta design of such an airplane provides high lift coefficients at low Reynolds-numbers. Furthermore, the centerfold of the airplane as a mean to improve the aerodynamic performance is identified.