Shinji Uemura

Evaluation of quad ducted‐fan helicopter

Purpose – With the purpose of clearing up the risk to rotor blades, this paper develops a quad ducted‐fan helicopter using four ducted‐fans instead of four rotor blades in a quad rotor helicopter.Design/methodology/approach – Auto hovering test, auto cruise test, and altitude control simulations were conducted to estimate the flight performance of the quad ducted‐fan helicopter.Findings – Flight performance of the test quad ducted‐fan helicopter is almost same as a commercial quad rotor helicopter, and it succeeds to decrease the risk to the rotor blade. However, endurance is shorter than that of the quad rotor helicopter, because of the ducted‐fan characteristics.Research limitations/implications – The test quad ducted‐fan helicopter can fly for about four minutes with two packs of fourcell (16.8 V)‐2200 mAh Lipo batteries, and it needs about 3.3 times as much energy as quad rotor helicopter. The authors will improve the performance of quad ducted‐fan helicopter by aerodynamics analysis and design of duc...