Investigating Errors Observed during UAV-Based Vertical Measurements Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are a popular platform for air quality measurements. For vertical measurements, rotary-wing UAVs particularly well-suited. However, an important concern with is how the rotor-downwash affects measurement accuracy. Measurements from recent field campaign showed notable discrepancies between data ascent and descent, which suggested UAV downwash may be cause. To investigate explain these observed discrepancies, we use high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to simulate during flight. We tracer model gaseous pollutant evaluate impact of on concentration around UAV. Our results indicate that, when measuring in gradient, UAV-based measurements were ?50% greater than expected but they accurate ascent, regardless location sensor. These provide explanation errors encountered insight collection methods future studies.