• environmental monitoring
• Mini UAV
• VTOL

The aerodynamic analysis of two innovative configurations for a Mini class UAV is presented in this thesis. Both configurations, devised for environmental monitoring and exploration, are able to operate as classic fixed-wing aircraft, hover mid-air as typical rotorcraft UAV and take-off and land vertically. This allows for long endurance and operative range in comparison of multi-copter solutions. On the other hand, the aircraft takes-off, lands and maneuvers in small, congested contexts, such as the urban ones, and could oversee static target easily.
The final purpose of the aerodynamic analysis is to evaluate the UAVs performance in some flight conditions. RANS numerical simulations have been carried out, together with the SST K − ω turbulence model.
Strengths and weaknesses of the two configurations, as described in this work, could be seen as the first step towards the development of an optimization process, taking into account both aerodynamics and flight mechanics’ aspects.