UAV Slat Design with Wind Tunnel Verification to Support Flight Performance Tests

Slat and flap controls are known to improve flight performance in lift under low speed operation. For Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), constraints in design and implementation limit its flight performance in lower speed operation. For many UAV applications, low speed high lift performance is important in various missions. This paper presents a UAV design with slat and flap for high lift at low speed. A wind tunnel model is made to examine the aerodynamic characteristics before fabrication into flight tests. UAV slat design, wind tunnel experiment, polystyrene fabrication, system implementation and flight test are recorded. Based on the UAV redesign, a flight control can be implemented to achieve low speed operations in high performance.