Design Optimization, Modeling, and Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Lifted By Coanda Effect

The Coanda effect is a natural phenomenon, which is that flowing fluid on a certain surface is pulled to the surface due to the viscosity of the fluid. This phenomenon can be utilized to produce the lift force of a flying object. This paper presents a new type of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) lifted by the Coanda effect, called SCoanda. We introduce the empirical study of its design and implementations. The principle of the Coanda effect is briefly explained in the first section. The design optimization and control of the UAV, and implementation issues are explained. The structural design of SCoanda is devised to use the maximum lift force produced by the Coanda effect. Since there are a plenty of cases about the shape of SCoanda, it has been limited to oval. It is investigated through computational fluid dynamics. As the result, an optimized design is determined among several candidates and appropriate structural materials are selected via tests. Also, dynamic modeling is suggested under several conditions of SCoanda before simulations are conducted to build up a controller and determine gains according to the dynamic modeling. Finally, the UAV is manufactured and its performances are successfully demonstrated in the indoor and the outdoor environments.