Testing a Custer Channel Wing Personal Air Vehicle

Abstract

The ever increasing road traffic congestion has initiated research in the field of providing other means of personal transportation than cars. One of the leading concepts with this respect is a Personal Air Vehicle, which is based on the idea of moving car traffic to the third dimension, thus eliminating congestion. For it to be possible, flying must become more efficient, than it is available with current aircrafts, providing the same amount of lift at a lower power consumption. This independent work describes a specific design of the Personal Air Vehicle based on a Custer Channel Wing technology. A small-scale model of the design was tested in a wind tunnel for various configurations of upstream velocities, angles of attack and motor rotational speeds to check whether it can provide above average lift generation capabilities. Before the wind tunnel experiments could be carried out, a numerical analysis had to be performed using a computer program Xrotor™, in order to find a propeller that would maximize device performance. After choosing the appropriate propeller, the model was tested for a wide range of operating conditions and met the lift generation expectations for some of them. However, there was a wide range of conditions for which it underperformed. This lead to a conclusion, that the device can successfully serve as a Personal Air Vehicle if and only if it is carefully designed for particular operating conditions.