What is it about?
This research activity presents experimental and numerical approaches to predict the performance of an isolated Tmotor 15”x5” Carbon Fiber small-scale rotor and this same blade mounted on a commercial quadcopter. Our study focusses on the challenges in the performance prediction of small-scale rotors which present chord-based Reynolds numbers computed at the 75% of the radial coordinate that fall in the very low Reynolds number regime (10^4-10^5). This range is particularly challenging to assess numerically due to the presence of separation induced transition. In the case of rotors, the fact that local velocity at each station varies linearly with the radial velocity makes the reproduction of these kind of flows even more challenging due to the significant variation of the Reynolds number.
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Why is it important?
The inclusion of a transition model in small scale rotors simulation attempts to add some degree of fidelity to the near-wall flow characteristics of classical URANS calculations.
Perspectives
Wriing this paper was really interesting due to the combination of numerical and experimental approaches that is necessary to give a real meaning to the employed CFD analysis.
Manuel Carreño Ruiz
Politecnico di Torino
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Experimental and numerical analysis of multicopter rotor aerodynamics, July 2021, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2021-2539.
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