(Preview) Go with the Flow: Can a 30 g Crazyflie be used as a particle to track wind gusts?

Researchers are interested in tracking particles in the atmosphere to study turbulence. Snow and bubbles have been used - but these systems require expensive infrastructure and have small measurement volumes. Can micro aerial vehicles, such as the 30 g Crazyflie, be used as particles? To explore this, we track the Crazyflie in a series of gusts, as compared to tiny, helium-filled soap bubbles. Instead of resisting the gust, the Crazyflie's objective is to be neutrally buoyant.
This work will be presented on November 19th, 2023 at the Annual Meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics:
Go with the Flow: Micro Aerial Vehicles as Lagrangian Particles in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer
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Authors:
Nathaniel Simon, Skywalker Li, Nicholas Conlin, Nathan Wei, Girguis Sedky, Anirudha Majumdar, and Marcus Hultmark