Understanding How Air Flows Around Small-Scale Drones

Frank Lagor, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is one of 36 scientists around the country to receive funding from the competitive U.S. Air Force Young Investigator Program.

Frank Lagor

Lagor will use the $450,000 award to study the aerodynamics of small uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones.

Small-scale drone use is becoming increasingly common, for example, in package delivery, emergency response, and defense reconnaissance, with more applications emerging every day. However, in order to expand their use, a better understanding of how the air flow patterns over their wings affect lift is needed.

Entitled “Towards Real-Time, 3D Coherent Structure Estimation for Flow Over Finite Wings,” the project seeks to improve the fundamental understanding of data-driven estimation of flow fields, as well as optimal sensor placement to visualize the flow.

The Young Investigator Program award is funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) in association with the Unsteady Aerodynamics and Turbulent Flows Program. It will provide funding for two graduate research assistants, and also benefits an ongoing research collaboration between Lagor and researchers at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

The objective of the Young Investigator Program is to foster creative basicresearch in science and engineering, enhance early career development ofoutstanding young investigators, and increase opportunities for the younginvestigators to recognize the Air Force mission and related challenges inscience and engineering. It is open to United States citizens and/or permanentresidents who are scientists and engineers at U.S. research institutions whoreceived PhD or equivalent degrees in the last seven years and show exceptionalability and promise for conducting basic research of military interests.

Conceptual image of the flow sensing to estimate airflow features over a wing.