Engineering Services

Case Study: Cooling System Design for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Flometrics client company Northrop Grumman was contracted by the military to modify the compact "Hunter" unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from gasoline engines to more efficient and powerful turbo-charged diesel engines. The plane needed new cowling to accommodate radiators and an intercooler. Flometrics modeled the original design and conducted wind tunnel tests and measurements.

New cowlings and scoops were designed and tested in the wind tunnel. A full size model of the cooling system was also mocked up to test the new radiators with actual temperature and flow found in the real vehicle.

Flometrics provided the following services on this project:

Design new cowlings and cooling paths.
Construct and test full size mock up of the cooling system.
Modify wind tunnel model and conduct wind tunnel measurements
CFD of the UAV and cooling passages

Custom computer software was written to model flight parameters of the vehicle. The vehicle is currently in service.