The CFD Modeling of Probe-Drogue Aerial Refueling Equipment for UAV

To research the automatic alignment problem in autonomous aerial refueling docking phase for UAV, by simulating the aerodynamic parameters of aerial refueling equipment the Probe-Drogue aerial refueling model was built. The three-dimensional graphics of the refueling hose intercepted segment, drogue and stable umbrella were drawn using CATIA, which were imported into GAMBIT for generating three-dimensional flow field grids. Then, the refueling hose intercepted segment model was calculated after setting the solution parameters in FLUENT for different flow angles and Mach number. At the same time, monitoring the convergence of the residuals, a group of stable aerodynamic parameters were obtained, which provided needed parameters for aerial refueling modeling.