Comparison Plusher and Tractor Propulsion for Micro Air Vehicle Applications

The propeller-induced flow highly effects to the aerodynamic characteristics of Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) because of large propeller size and low flight speed. The tractor propulsive induced flow may decrease the lift-to-drag ratio up to 50%. This is due to that wing’s local angle of attack is reduced. In the pusher-propulsive configuration, the local angle of attack is not changed but it decreases the propulsive efficiency. This paper objects to demonstrate and compare the aerodynamics advantage and disadvantage of propeller installation, pusher and tractor on a very low aspect ratio MAV. The study was done by an experiment in wind tunnel.