Aircrafts being capable of Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) and hover are increasingly emerging in various critical and routine applications. Rescue missions in roads and environmental disasters, observance and monitoring-based carriers, surveillance, payload carriage in environments that require high manoeuvrability and controllability are just a few examples in which this type of aircraft is essential. Helicopters are the most typical crafts in this kind, but concerning the thrusting mechanism, several alternatives are yet in hand. Nevertheless, each of them has their own strength and weakness points, thus, one should select a design to utilize it toward the desired output and try to overcome the drawbacks in this regard. The tendency to equip aircrafts with cycloidal rotors (shortly say, cyclorotors) as means of Vertical Take-Off and Landing thrusters has increased in recent years. These devices present several advantages such as considerably lower noise production and more stable hover and vertical displacements in comparison with conventional screw propellers as used in helicopters. In the present work a novel concept of propulsion system combining two cycloidal rotors with a pair-wing system is presented. A double wing assembly is designed to place in between the two cyclorotors on each side of the aircraft. The bottom wing is to divide the flow in two separate portions through the downwash region of the front cycloidal rotor. These two portions can possibly be controlled using the control systems to displace the wings in three different motions. The top wing thus, provides a channel-like passage in nozzle-shape to work on the passing airstream to enhance its properties for a better thrust and lift forces. By this, we combine the advantages of cycloidal rotor propulsion systems with the advantages of wings. Other important characteristic of the presented flight propulsion system is that it can provide the vertical take-off and landing phases on both ground and marine surfaces. To improve the efficiency of these propulsion system the implementation of plasma actuators in the pair-wing system will be experimentally studied. Plasma actuators are electronic devices with proven ability for active flow control. These devices, when operated, produce a body force which pulls the adjacent air toward the surface, in which they are applied, and accelerates it downstream, in a tangential direction to the surface. Therefore, they will be applied in the pair-wings flow separation region in order to attach the flow to surface and delay the separation. The concept behind this novel propulsion system will be explained and numerical and experimental results that support its operation will be presented.


Novel Propulsion System for Vtol Aircrafts Based on Cycloidal Rotors Coupled With Wings

Division / Sponsors: 
Heat Transfer Division (HTD), Fluids Engineering Division (FED)

Heat Transfer Summer Conference
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/HT/HT2020/volume/83709

18th International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels, and Minichannels
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/ICNMM/ICNMM2020/volume/83693

Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/FEDSM/FEDSM2020/volume/83716

HT-ICNMM2020 - Virtual Conference, SHTC - Virtual Conference, FEDSM2020 - Virtual Conference

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