Effects of UAS Rotor Wash on Air Quality Measurements
Laboratory and field tests examined the potential for unmanned aircraft system (UAS) rotor wash effects on gas and particle measurements from a biomass combustion source. Tests compared simultaneous placement of two sets of CO and CO gas sensors and PM instruments on a UAS body and on a vertical or horizontal extension arm beyond the rotors. For 1 Hz temporal concentration comparisons, correlations of body versus arm placement for the PM particle sensors yielded R = 0.85 and for both gas sensor pairs exceeded R of 0.90. Increasing the timestep to 10 s average concentrations throughout the burns improved the R value for the PM to 0.95 from 0.85. Finally, comparison of whole-test average concentrations further increased the correlations between body- and arm-mounted sensors, exceeding R of 0.98 for both gases and particle measurements. Evaluation of PM emission factors with single factor ANOVA analyses showed no significant differences between the values derived from the arm, either vertical or horizontal, and those from the body. These results suggest that rotor wash effects on body- and arm-mounted sensors are minimal in scenarios where short duration, time-averaged concentrations are used to calculate emission factors and whole-area flux values.