This master’s thesis addresses the aerodynamic design of rotor blades for the MAQ Mars exploration drone, whose conceptual parameters were established in a prior study by Ing. Edmund Havran. The design challenge arises from the extreme conditions of the Martian atmosphere. Its density is approximately 1.5 percent of that of Earth, and its composition is dominated by carbon dioxide, which results in rotor blade operation at very low Reynolds numbers while simultaneously encountering compressibility effects at the blade tip. A simple wedge airfoil parameterized by the position and height
of a control point was selected as the geometric basis. Optimal airfoil geometries for three characteristic radial blade sections were determined using Response Surface Methodology based on a Face-Centered Central Composite Design. The candidate geometries were subsequently verified through steady-state two-dimensional CFD simulations in ANSYS Fluent using the k-omega SST turbulence model. The resulting aerodynamic polars were integrated into a BEMT analytical model to evaluate overall rotor hover performance. The achieved Figure of Merit represents an improvement of approximately 12 percent over the baseline conceptual design. The thesis identifies the principal methodological limitations of the adopted approach and proposes the adoption of the Transition SST model and a full three-dimensional CFD analysis of the complete rotor configuration
as the primary directions for future research.