Wichita State designs tailless drone using Simcenter™ FLOEFD™

The National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) at Wichita University used Simcenter™ FLOEFD™ software to design a unique class of drone, small unmanned aerial systems or sUAS for short. This type of drone has become increasingly popular for commercial usage.

NAIR went with Simcenter™ FLOEFD™ for their creation of a tailless drone as they felt it offered much more than other CFD codes. Simcenter™ FLOEFD™ has CAD embedded functionality, which allows for automatic detection of fluid regions and eliminates the need to clean up the geometry.

“Simcenter FLOEFD was a valuable tool when designing the demonstrator sUAS for NIAR”

Harsh Shah – Research Engineer, NAIR, Wichita State University

CFD Simulations were preformed using the created sUAS and the thermal management of the engine was the second focus of the CFD analysis. “The ability to do this in Simcenter™ FLOEFD™ provides a powerful tool to the design engineer where this would normally have to be left to the CFD analyst,” says Shah.

To read more about Wichita University’s sUAS study, click here.