Low drag design of radome for unmanned aerial vehicle

Radar is an important payload of reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system. The radome of Heron class UAV System is low-drag designed. Based on the geometric constraint of radar, airfoils and cubic curves are used to fast parametric modeling of two low-drag radomes. Aerodynamic numerical simulation is carried out full-aircraft with two different radomes. The lift-drag characteristics and flow features of two radomes are comparatively analyzed. The results show that the radome significantly changes flow characteristics of the UAV. The droplet-shaped radome has a lower drag than streamline-nacelle-shaped. Its cruise lift-drag ratio is increased by 2.3% compared with droplet-shaped radome configuration.