ABSTRACT
Rotors play a pivotal role in the overall performance of a rotary-wing aircraft. Forces
and moments required for flight are achieved through effective, compact and high-lift
rotor design. Important rotor parameters are thrust, power and torque, which are
functions of blade twist and rotor radius. A robust and efficient rotary-wing UAV flight
control system must provide the vehicle with the ability to perform safe flight
manoeuvres. This comprise normal flight conditions and proportionate regulation of
thrust in response to the variation in power demand, which comes to play due to
changes in aerodynamics conditions within the vehicle operating environment. This
paper presents an in-depth analysis on the effect of variations of propeller blade twist
and diameter with the view to designing an autonomous flight control system for a
micro rotary-wing UAV. Virtual Blade Model (VBM) was used for the analysis and the
result validated using a quad-rotor vehicle. The study comes up with an efficient
propeller choice suitable for autonomous reconnaissance quad-rotor UAV.