Improving Safety: Design and Development of a Bladeless Thruster for Autonomous Multicopters

The purpose of this research project was to get one step closer to the design and manufacturing of a bladeless multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) using bladeless technology. The motivation behind this research was to eliminate the hazards created by exposed propellers on conventional multi-rotor UAVs. The bladeless propulsion system would serve as an alternative to propellers on multi-rotor UAVs. The concept of a bladeless propulsion system was inspired by Dysons bladeless fan. Research was done in the areas of the bladeless fan cross-section geometry, air-flow properties, impellers, motors, ducted fans, power sources, and conventional quad copter dynamic modeling were used to design the propulsion system for the UAV. The data collected from this research was used to design a nozzle that attaches to an Electric Ducted Fan (EDF), to create a bladeless thruster prototype. The nozzle is a circular ring with the cross section of an airfoil, which is designed to induce an airflow from the surroundings through the ring. The nozzle and concept of the UAV was designed and virtually tested using AutoCAD, Inventor, and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The concept of the UAV consists of four bladeless thrusters which were 3D printed and tested with the EDF. One test structure, consisting of two thrusters was built to test the stability that the propulsion system in one degree of freedom, which essentially tests for pitch or roll angles of a multi-rotor UAV. Another test structure, consisting of four thrusters was built to test the stability in three degrees of freedom, which essentially tests for the combination of pitch, roll, and the yaw heading.