Validation of a quad-rotor helicopter Matlab/Simulink and Solidworks models

Over the years, quad-rotor helicopters have generated considerable interest in the community of intelligent control. This can be linked to the fact that they are simple in construction and very agile. Control of the vehicle is achieved by varying the lift forces of the four rotors, which depend on the flow conditions around the propellers and the propeller speeds. In this paper, computations performed with an analytical model of the quad-rotor built in Matlab/Simulink are compared with those obtained using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) on a 3D Solidworks model of the same helicopter. The two are also compared with results from real experiments, with a general agreement between the numerical and experimental results, which can be judged satisfactory. This is enough to validate the use of the simulation results for similar future analysis and prediction of the helicopter movements and effects of wind flow on it.