Wind Tunnel Testing of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems for Precision Crop-Spraying Applications

In recent years, precise spraying operations using Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), also called drones, are growing parallel with the novel agricultural revolution. The main objective of the research activity reported in this paper is to obtain information about spray system design related to mission flight conditions. We performed a 3D scan of the reference blade geometry to allow the development of an accurate Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model able to predict trajectories of droplets injected on the rotor’s wake. To validate this model, we planned and carried out a wind tunnel experimental campaign. As a result, we expect to define nozzles’ position and type along with RPAS flight velocity and altitude to achieve optimal spraying operations.