Simulation Study on the Propulsion Electrode Structure of Ion Wind Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Based on the COMSOL Multiphysics finite element software, the influence of electrode structures and arrays on the effective thrust and thrust-power ratio of ion wind is studied. First, the influencing factors of ion wind under parallel-placed electrode structures are analyzed. After determining the optimal parameters, the parallel and cross-placed electrode structures are compared. It is found that under the same electrode spacing, the cross-placed structure generates greater effective thrust. Further exploration of different electrode array structures shows that when the array spacing is 40 mm, the effective thrust and thrust-power ratio of the cross-placed array are increased by 15.45% and 2.92% respectively compared with the parallel-placed array; when the spacing is 50 mm, the effective thrust of the former is increased by 27.6%, while the thrust-power ratio only decreases by 5.6%. It can be seen that under small array spacing, the cross-placed array can significantly enhance the effective thrust and maintain a high thrust-power ratio, which is suitable for the electrode array design of compact ion wind propulsion unmanned aerial vehicle and helps to improve the effective payload of the unmanned aerial vehicle.