INSTRUMENTATION OF A SUBESCALE GROUND EFFECT VEHICLE, VOLITAN, TO MEASURE FLIGHT PROPULSION EFFICIENCY

Resumo

© 2024, International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences. All rights reserved.With the development of electronics and programming in recent years, the possibility of aeronautical projects is being studied by academia and industry, with the aim of improving and adapting them to different projects for new applications and realities. One of these cases is the adaptation of projects such as the ground effect vehicles developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This is an aircraft capable of flying close to the surface of the water and whose advantage is the energy saving of the propulsion of up to 40%. There are several companies developing projects of this type around the world, adapting them to the capacity and operating conditions of the different realities. In Brazil, the startup Aeroriver is developing a ground effect vehicle, the Volitan. This project aims to improve the transportation of people and cargo on the rivers of the Amazon. For the project to be successful, it is necessary to know up to what altitude this aircraft can fly to demonstrate energy savings, safety and maneuverability. A sub-scale prototype has been developed for initial testing and is currently being tested to determine the range and flight efficiency improvement of the Volitan in ground effect. Propulsion is provided by electric motors and power is supplied by a battery bank, allowing 15 minutes of flight autonomy. In this paper, the development of the electronics and instrumentation of a prototype is presented. In order to measure the efficiency of Volitan in flight, it will be equipped with load cells to measure the thrust force, RPM, the voltage and current consumed by the motors. Lidar to precisely measure the altitude in relation to the water, and a PixHawk controller used to record accelerations, speeds, position, attitude of the aircraft, etc. As results are presented the energy consumption of the batteries as a function of altitude, in flight condition in ground effect, as well as the thrust force generated by the motors, in addition to determining up to which altitude that the ground effect has a good performance and improves the efficiency of energy consumption of the Volitan.

Palavras-chave