Aerodynamics of Drones for Offshore Wind Farm Monitoring

Over the past few years, drone has extended the ability for accomplishing vast and diverse civilian and military applications and missions. However, a key limitation of the large-scale application of drone-based techniques is the endurance of the device. This research aims to enhance the endurance of small drones by further exploring the mechanisms of dandelion seed inspired flight and other passive propulsion modes. Particularly, investigations on the fluid-structure interaction and other aerodynamics characteris-tics with simple geometries and unsteady flow conditions will be carried out at both experimental and numerical levels to develop novel and fundamental knowledge about passive propulsion mode. Subsequently, the developed technique will be extended to design and analyse low-drag energy harvesting devices, contributing to new engineering solutions for zero-energy and low-energy transportation.