Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, (2019), 32(5): 1121–1135

Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics

& Beihang University
Chinese Journal of Aeronautics
[email protected]
www.sciencedirect.com

Effects of blade aspect ratio and taper ratio on

hovering performance of cycloidal rotor with large
blade pitching amplitude
Yu HU *, Xuyang FU, Hailang ZHANG, Gengqi WANG, Hussain FARHAT

School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China

Received 28 March 2018; revised 29 July 2018; accepted 20 September 2018

Available online 8 February 2019

KEYWORDS Abstract In recent years, a lot of research work has been carried out on the cycloidal rotors. How-
Blade pitching motion; ever, it lacks thorough understanding about the effects of the blade platform shape on the hover
Cyclocopter; efficiency of the cycloidal rotor, and the knowledge of how to design the platform shape of the
Cyclogyro; blades. This paper presents a numerical simulation model based on Unsteady Reynolds-
Cycloidal rotor; Averaged Navier–Stokes equations (URANSs), which is further validated by the experimental
Dynamic stall results. The effects of blade aspect ratio and taper ratio are analyzed, which shows that the cycloidal
rotors with the same chord length have quite similar performance even though the blade aspect
ratio varies from a very small value to a large one. By comparing the cycloidal rotors with different
taper ratios, it is found that the rotors with large blade taper ratio outperform those with small
taper ratio. This is due to the fact that the blade with larger taper ratio has longer chord and hence
better efficiency. The analysis results show that the unsteady aerodynamic effects due to blade pitch-
ing motion play a more important role in the efficiency than the blade platform shape. Therefore we
should pay more attention to the blade airfoil and pitching motion than the blade platform shape.
The main contributions of this paper include: the analysis of the effects of aspect ratio and taper
ratio on the hover efficiency of cycloidal rotor based on both the experimental and numerical sim-
ulation results; the finding of the main influencing factors on the hover efficiency; the qualitative
guidance on how to design the blade platform shape for cycloidal rotors.
Ó 2019 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. This is
an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction

* Corresponding author. Cycloidal rotor is a type of propeller whose blades rotate

E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. HU). around an axis in parallel with the rotor shaft. The dynamic
Peer review under responsibility of Editorial Committee of CJA. pitching of the blades generates thrust due to unsteady aerody-
namic effects. The aircraft that flies by cycloidal rotors is called
a cyclogyro or cyclocopter. For the cycloidal rotors with large
pitching amplitude, the Dynamic Stall Vortices (DSVs)
Production and hosting by Elsevier

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cja.2019.01.015
1000-9361 Ó 2019 Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
1122 Y. HU et al.

produced by blade pitching motion will induce Blade Vortex history are also discussed. Then a qualitative perspective on
Interactions (BVIs) upon neighboring blades.1 Since the blade how to design the blade platform shape of the cycloidal rotors
is actually pitching in the curvilinear flow, the virtual camber is presented.
and virtual incidence effects caused by the flow curvature have
a significant impact on the performance of the cycloidal 2. Force measurement of cycloidal rotor
rotor.2,3
The cycloidal rotor incorporates potentially high aerody- The aerodynamic forces of the cycloidal rotor are measured by
namic efficiency, very low noise and vectored thrust at low experiments in order to validate the numerical simulation
Reynolds number, and it could be a good propulsion device model. The experimental apparatus is shown in Fig. 1. The
for Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) that flies in confined space.2,3 parameters of the cycloidal rotor are shown in Table 1.
In recent years, due to its potential benefits, the cycloidal rotor The blade skin is made of carbon fiber sheet and the blade
has attracted the researchers. Iosilevskii and Levy carried out spar is a carbon fiber tube. The rotor is powered by a Pana-
the numerical studies on the cycloidal rotor with diameter of sonic servo motor rated at 600 W. The rotation speed can be
0.11 m.4 They found that the stream traces around the rotor controlled precisely by the servo motor driver. The user can
formed a distorted doublet. The Fast Fourier Transformation control the servo motor through a Liquid Crystal Display
(FFT) analysis was performed on rotor force history. It is (LCD) touch screen console. A Programmable Logic Con-
found that there are intense interactions among the blades.
Hwang et al. developed several cyclocopters. The test flights
proved that it is possible to maintain the stable and controlled
flight with the help of cycloidal rotors.5–7 Lee et al. developed a
cyclocopter with two cycloidal rotors and one tail rotor. They
developed a novel analytic aerodynamic model for the cycloi-
dal rotors. Finally a hovering flight was performed in a teth-
ered test.8 Benedict et al.9–11 also performed extensive
researches on the cycloidal rotors based on experiments and
numerical simulations. Based on experimental approach, the
cycloidal rotors with different design parameters were dis-
cussed by parametric analysis. They concluded that the cycloi-
dal rotor has higher hover efficiency than screw rotor and the
elastic torsion of the blade structure can result in smaller aero-
dynamic force.2 They also developed remote controlled cyclo-
copter that flied with good stability.12,13 Yang integrated the
aero-elastic model into the OVERFLOW and performed
numerical simulations with cycloidal propellers. The analysis
indicates that both 2D and 3D analysis can produce results
that are quite close to the experimental results.14 Leger et al.
developed a simulation model for the cycloidal rotor with good
accuracy.15 Xisto et al. performed parametric analysis on the
cycloidal propeller in hover status.16 They concluded that the
best chord to radius ratio is about 0.5 and the best pitching
axis location is 35% of blade chord from the leading edge.
Gagnon et al. developed the analytical model for the cycloidal
rotors. The analyses suggest that cycloidal rotors can increase
the efficiency of a helicopter at high velocities while flexibility
reduces it and may lead to instabilities.17 The 2D and 3D
numerical simulations were performed by us to study the aero-
dynamics of the cycloidal rotors.1,18 The analysis results indi-
cate that Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes
equations (URANSs) are adequate to predict the details of
the aerodynamic forces and flow field of the cycloidal rotor
with affordable computation resources. 2D model can predict
the aerodynamic forces well even though the Blade Tip Vor-
tices (BTVs) are absent.1,18
Although the effects of the blade platform shape had been
studied based on parametric analysis,9,10 it still lacks thorough
understanding about the effects of the blade platform shape on
the hover efficiency of the cycloidal rotor and the knowledge of
how to design the blade platform shape.
In this paper, 2D and 3D numerical simulation models for
cycloidal rotors are developed to study the effects of blade
aspect ratio and taper ratio. Based on the numerical simulation
results, the details of the flow field and rotor force production Fig. 1 Experimental apparatus.
Effects of blade aspect ratio and taper ratio 1123

model, and then the aerodynamic force and effects of wake

Table 1 Parameters of baseline cycloidal rotor in experiments.
were predicted by lifting-line theory. The lift and drag of the
Parameter Value blade elements were predicted by the L-B dynamic stall model.
Rotor diameter (mm) 360 This model is limited to the blades with large aspect ratio
Number of blades 4 because of lifting-line formulation.21 Prabhu et al. developed
Chord length (mm) 70 a 2D numerical model based on panel method. The surface
Blade aspect ratio 4 of the airfoil was discretized into a number of panels. A point
Airfoil of blade NACA0015 vortex was shed tangential to the trailing edge of the blade at
Blade pitch axis position 50% chord length from leading edge each time step. The strength of the free vortex was equal to the
Pitch angle amplitude (°) 45
change in the bound vortex but was opposite in sign.22 The free
vortices convect with local velocity at each time step.
The last category is based on the CFD approach, where the
troller (PLC) then converts and feeds the user command into Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes Equations
the servo motor driver, as shown in Fig. 1 (a). The forces from (URANS) is solved. This approach has been widely used in
the cycloidal rotor are measured by a 6-component force bal- dynamic stall simulation and analysis.12 Yang performed the
ance manufactured by China Aerodynamic Research and numerical simulation based on URANS and overset mesh
Development Center. The static error of the force balance is technique using OVERTURNS.14 The CFD simulation results
less than or equal to 0.3%. The excitation power for the force show that the simulation based on 2D mesh system corre-
balance is 11 V with accuracy of 50 lV. The Data Condition- sponds to the mid-span section of the 3D mesh system. Both
ing And Acquisition (DCAQ) module consists of a NI SCXI- the 2D and 3D simulation can obtain fairly good prediction
1520 and a NI PCI-6133 card. of the vertical force, but cannot capture side force well, and
The cycloidal rotors with different blade aspect ratios and thus underestimate the power. Both 2D and 3D simulation
taper ratios are also tested (Fig. 1(c)). The experiments not can produce fairly good flow field compared with results from
only provide the experimental data to exposit the effects of Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) experiments. Legar et al.
aspect ratio and taper ratio, but also testify the capabilities performed 2D CFD analysis based on a finite-volume imple-
of the numerical simulation models when there is large varia- mentation of the incompressible URANS. The numerical sim-
tion of blade platform parameters. ulation can provide satisfactory solutions in the presence of
adverse pressure gradients and dynamic stall.16 Gagnon pro-
3. Numerical simulation model of cycloidal rotor posed the 3D numerical simulations based on sliding mesh
technique using OpenFOAM.17
3.1. Selection of numerical simulation model All the models stated above can predict the aerodynamic
forces with good accuracy. However, the semi-empirical mod-
Several analysis models have been developed to predict the els are based on certain assumptions and simplifications. The
aerodynamic forces of the cycloidal rotors. These algorithms details of the physics lying behind the cycloidal rotors are
fall into three categories. neglected. Sometimes there are certain semi-empirical parame-
The first category is the semi-analytical and semi-empirical ters deduced from the experimental results, making these mod-
model. The analytic models for pitching airfoils (Theodorsen’s els highly case specific. They are not suitable for parametric
theory or Garrick model, etc.) are usually employed to predict study if vast variation of design parameters was involved.
the aerodynamic forces due to blade pitching motion. The The models based on potential flow theories are also based
downwash in the rotor cage and interactions among the blades on certain assumptions or simplifications. These models have
are then modeled by semi-empirical approaches. The 3D difficulties in simulating the behavior of DSVs and blade vor-
effects of the blades are usually predicted by the formulae of tex interactions. The CFD approaches can produce not only
wing theory for fixed wing aircraft. Mcnabb developed an good predictions of the forces of the cycloidal rotors, but also
analysis model based on Theodorsen’s theory for pitching air- the details of the flow field that are validated by the PIV exper-
foil. The downwash in the rotor cage was evaluated by the iments. For the test cases to be discussed in this paper, there is
empirical equation for co-axial helicopter rotor.19 Benedict large variation of design parameters regarding the blade plat-
et al. developed the double-multiple stream tube inflow form shape. To study the mechanisms of the cycloidal rotors,
model.2 The rotor was divided into a number of stream tubes. the analysis on the details of the flow field is needed. Therefore
The stream tubes intersected the rotor twice at the upstream the numerical simulation model based on incompressible
and downstream intersection point. The blade swept area URANS and sliding mesh technique is selected in this paper.
was deemed as thin actuator surfaces, across which the rotor
imparts axial momentum into the flow.2 Leger et al. proposed 3.2. Blade pitching kinetics
the equivalent rotor model.15,16 In this model, the blade oscil-
lation was simulated by Garrick model. The resultant velocity The pitching control mechanism is shown in Fig. 2. The pitch
of blade was computed by the empirical equations. angle of the blade is controlled by an eccentric. For the blade
The second category is based on potential flow theories. An with pitch link fixed on the eccentric, the control mechanism
unsteady free wake model was developed by Tang et al.20 This is a four-bar control mechanism (OO0 BA). For the rest of
approach was performed by the combination of stream-tube blades with pitch link connected to the eccentric with hinge,
inflow model, lifting-line formulation, free wake model and the control mechanism is equivalent to the geared five-bar
the semi-empirical Leishman–Beddoes (L–B) dynamic stall control mechanism with gear ratio of 1:1 (OO0 CDE), as
model. The initial flow field was given by stream-tube inflow shown in Fig. 2. The kinetics of the blades is expressed by
1124 Y. HU et al.

Fig. 2 Kinetics of blade.

the equations for four-bar and geared five-bar mechanism (LES) and Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS). DNS
with gear ratio of 1:1.23 Equations for blade kinetics are then is the most detailed approach, but it demands huge computa-
incorporated into the User Defined Functions (UDF) and tion resources, and therefore it is too expensive to be used for
loaded into the Fluent solver. As shown in Fig. 2 (c), if the cases in this paper. LES is also too expensive to be used for
viewed in the moving frame that is attached to the blade sup- such complex problems as discussed in this paper. According
porting strut, the blade is actually performing pitching oscil- to the existing numerical simulation study on the dynamic
lation in the curvilinear flow. stall, URANS is the best choice that incorporates both accept-
able computation cost and accuracy.12,24–27 The Reynolds
3.3. Solver setup number of the cycloidal rotor studied in this paper ranges from
20,000 to 80,000; hence the SST k-x model with low Reynolds
The baseline design of the test cases to be discussed is defined correction is used. This model can predict the airfoil dynamic
in Table 1. All simulations are performed by ANSYS Fluent. stall with better accuracy than that with the k-e model and the
The maximum blade peripheral velocity is 16.9 m/s, which falls standard k-x model.12,24,25
into low speed range, and therefore the incompressible Navier–
Stokes equations and the pressure based solver are employed. 3.5. Moving mesh techniques for cycloidal rotors
The Pressure Implicit with Splitting of Operators (PISO)
scheme is selected to solve the pressure velocity coupling prob- The motion of the blade can be decomposed into the revolu-
lem. The convective flux terms and the diffusive flux terms are tion around the rotor shaft and the pitching oscillation about
discredited by second-order upwind scheme and second-order the pitching axis of the blade. To model the blade motion, the
central difference scheme respectively. For the transient for- sliding mesh technique is employed.1,5 Since the mesh elements
mulation, the second-order implicit time marching algorithm of the sliding mesh need not to be deformed or re-meshed at
is selected. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations solved each time step, the low quality elements due to mesh deforma-
in this paper are as follows: tion or the time to update the mesh are avoided.13
@u @v As shown in Fig. 3, three levels of mesh blocks are deployed
@x
þ @y þ @w
@z
¼0

2  in the computation domain.1 In this approach, a cylindrical
@p @ u @2 u @2 u
q du
dt
¼ S Mx  @x
þ l @x 2 þ @y 2 þ @z 2
hole is cut in the fixed mesh block (i.e. the fixed domain).

2  ð1Þ The rotating mesh block around the cycloidal rotor, named
@p @ v @2 v @2 v
q dt ¼ SMy  @y þ l @x2 þ @y2 þ @z2
dv
as ‘‘revolving domain”, is fitted into that hole. The cylindrical

2  hole for each blade is then cut in the ‘‘revolving domain”. The
¼ SMz  @p
2 2
q dw
dt @z
þ l @@xw2 þ @@yw2 þ @@zw2 pitching mesh block around each blade, labeled as ‘‘pitching
domain”, is fitted into the corresponding hole in the revolving
where q is density, p is pressure, t is time , ðu; v; wÞ is velocity, l
  domain. Mesh elements are condensed around the blade sur-
is viscosity coefficient and SMx ; SMy ; SMz is source term.
face, the blade tip and the regions where the blade wake and
vortices are expected. For all cases, the size of two adjacent
3.4. Selection of turbulence model mesh elements next to the mesh interfaces is carefully set, such
that the ratio of their size is less than 2.0. This can reduce the
There are three main types of turbulent modeling methods, i.e. influence of the hanging nodes, which cause discontinuities and
Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS), Large Eddy Simulation spurious vortex structure.24
Effects of blade aspect ratio and taper ratio 1125

Fig. 3 Mesh system for cycloidal rotors.

For all cases studied in this paper, the structured mesh is stretches at least 15 times blade span. This ensured that the
deployed in the whole computation domain. Only the cycloidal influence of the far field is minimized.
rotor with half blade span is modeled. There is a symmetric The mesh independent tests are made as described in Ref.1.
boundary (Fig. 3(b)) at the middle plane of the cycloidal rotor. The results obtained by different mesh sizes are validated with
In this way, the computation resources are cut down by half. experimental data. It is found that for each pitching domain
The far field condition is set to be zero pressure gradients around the blade, 240 mesh elements in the chord-wise direc-
and zero velocity. In order to simulate the boundary layer tion, 104 grids in the span-wise direction and 54 grid elements
effects more accurately, no wall function is used. Hence the in the radial direction are fine enough to generate mesh inde-
height of the first row mesh near the blade surface is set such pendent solution. There are about 1.2 million mesh elements
that y+ is equal to or less than 1. In the directions that are per- for each pitching domain, more than 1 million mesh elements
pendicular to the rotor shaft, the far field stretches at least 20 for the revolving domain and 500000 mesh elements for the
times rotor diameter. In the direction that is parallel to the fixed domain. Altogether there are about 6.5 million mesh ele-
rotor shaft, the dimension of the computation domain ments in the computation domain. Various time step lengths

Fig. 4 Definitions of reference frames and aerodynamic forces.

1126 Y. HU et al.

Fig. 5 Comparison of numerical simulation results and experimental data.

Fig. 6 Comparison of efficiency of cycloidal rotors with different blade platforms.

Table 2 Parameters of test cases with different blade platforms.

Parameter Cases with different aspect ratios Cases with different taper ratios
Rotor diameter (mm) 360 360
Number of blades 4 4
Root chord length (mm) 70 70
Blade taper ratio 1.0 0.25 (AR = 6.4), 0.5 (AR = 5.3), 0.75 (AR = 4.57), 1.0 (AR = 4)
Blade aspect ratio 1, 4, 8 and 2D model (infinite)
Airfoil of blade NACA0015 NACA0015
Blade pitch axis position 50% chord length from leading edge 50% chord length from leading edge
Pitch angle amplitude (°) ±45 ±45
Effects of blade aspect ratio and taper ratio 1127

cycloidal rotor, as shown in Fig. 4. The rotation speed of the

rotor is x and the azimuth angle of Blade 1 and rotor is h.
h = 0° when Blade 1 is located at top most position of its tra-
jectory. The rotor shaft is defined as Z-axis. The vertical force,
or Fv, is along Y-axis and is positive if it points upwards. The
horizontal force, or Fh, is along X-axis and it is positive if it
points rightwards. u is the thrust offset angle. The tangential
force is along the direction of the blade tangential velocity
and it is positive if it is in the same direction as the tangential
velocity. The radial force is along the direction of the blade
supporting strut and it is positive when it points outwards.

4. Validation of numerical simulation model

Fig. 7 Time averaged rotor force coefficients in one cycle
(x = 900 r/min). The results from the numerical simulation and the force mea-
surement experiments are compared. The comparison shows
that the numerical simulation can produce results that match
are tested and finally it is found that 1200 steps per cycle is fine well with the experimental data. The 3D model can produce
enough to produce time independent solution.1 better prediction of aerodynamic forces than the 2D model,
especially the side force, as shown in Fig. 5.
3.6. Coordinate system The hover efficiency of the cycloidal rotors with different
blade platforms is shown in Fig. 6. The hover efficiency of
The analyses of all test cases are based on the inertial reference the rotors is measured by the Figure of Merit (FM). It is
frame and the moving reference frame that rotate with the defined as the ratio of ideal power with respect to the actual

Fig. 8 Force generation history of one blade in one cycle (inertial frame, x = 900 r/min).

Fig. 9 Force generation history of one blade in one cycle.

1128 Y. HU et al.

power required to hover. Since the FM increases with the where: FM is hover efficiency, PL is power loading, DL is disk
thrust coefficient, usually the efficiency of two rotors is com- loading.
pared with the same disc loading.28 In this paper, only the cycloidal rotors working at large
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi pitching amplitude are discussed, since the cycloidal rotors
ideal power DL perform better when the blades are set to high pitching ampli-
FM ¼ ¼ PL ð2Þ
actual power 2q tudes.9,11 The numerical simulations based on different blade

Fig. 10 Comparison of flow field around cycloidal rotors with different aspect ratios.
Effects of blade aspect ratio and taper ratio 1129

platform shapes are performed, as defined in Table 2. Then the due to larger aspect ratio is much less significant than that
experimental results (Fig. 6 (a) and (b)) are compared with the due to the airfoil and chord length.
results from CFD simulations (Fig. 6 (c) and (d)). In Fig. 6 (a), The time averaged rotor forces in one cycle are shown in
only the experimental results for AR = 1 and AR = 4 are Fig. 7, where Cvf is vertical force coefficient, Chf is horizontal
available, since the centrifugal force of the blade with high force coefficient and Cq is torque coefficient. It can be seen
aspect ratio causes large deformation and vibration. that, for all 3D cases with BTVs, the aerodynamic force coef-
From the experimental results, it can be seen that the hover ficients do not vary much with the aspect ratio. The vertical
efficiency increases slightly with blade aspect ratio and drops forces of 3D models are slightly higher than those of 2D
with decreased taper ratio. The experimental results and model.
numerical simulation results show the same trend of the effects The aerodynamic forces of the rotors with different blade
of the blade platform shape. Therefore the analyses in the rest aspect ratios in one cycle are shown in Fig. 8, where Cr is radial
part of this paper are all based on numerical simulations. force coefficient and Ct is tangential force coefficient. The
forces in the moving reference frame are shown in Fig. 9. It
5. Results and discussion can be seen that although the time averaged forces of the
rotors with finite blade span are quite close to those obtained
Having gained the confidence on the proposed numerical sim- by 2D model, and the instantaneous forces are quite different.
ulation model, the aerodynamic forces of cycloidal rotor with For the 2D cases, there are quite large force peaks. The blade
aspect ratio of 1, 4, 8 and 2D model (infinite aspect ratio) are pitching angle reaches maximum when the azimuth angle is
analyzed to figure out the effects of the aspect ratio and BTVs 180°; however the force peak is delayed and it is located at
upon the performance of the cycloidal rotor. The dimensions the azimuth angle around 220°-240°. For the 3D cases, the
of the test cases are defined in Table 2. force curves are much smoother and the aerodynamic force
reaches maximum when azimuth angle is around 180°. The
5.1. Cases with different aspect ratios horizontal force peak and torque of the 3D cases are also much
smaller than those of the 2D cases.
The velocity and vorticity distributions in inertial frame are
The FM of the cycloidal rotors with different aspect ratios is shown in Fig. 10. From Fig. 10 (a), it can be seen that the lar-
shown in Fig. 6. It can be seen that the FM increases slightly ger the aspect ratio is, the more intense the downwash in the
with the aspect ratio. The averaged FM of AR = 8 is only rotor cage and the slip stream are. For the cycloidal rotor with
14% higher than the cases with AR = 1. The FM computed very small aspect ratio (AR = 1), the downwash in the rotor
from 3D numerical simulation model is slightly higher than cage is very weak. The BTVs tend to alleviate the downwash
that from 2D model. However, for the test cases with different in the rotor cage and the slip stream.
airfoils, the FM can be improved by 40%29 and for the test The vorticity contour and span-wise velocity distribution
cases with different blade chord lengths, the FM can be are displayed in Fig. 10(b). There are downwash areas below
improved by three fold.30 Therefore the improvement of FM

Table 3 Vortex structure and velocity distribution as viewed from different directions. (Q criterion, Q = 0.001).
AR h = 0° h = 45°

8
1130 Y. HU et al.

the blades. The higher the aspect ratio is, the wider the down- 5.2. Discussion on effects of aspect ratio
wash area there will be. The slip stream of the rotor is highly
contracted below both the top blade and the lower blade, The flow field of cycloidal rotor at symmetric plane observed
which means that the blades are producing thrust. This is con- in inertial frame is shown in Fig. 10(c) and Fig. 11. The flow
sistent with the PIV experimental results from Ref.31 The span- field at symmetric plane observed in moving frame is shown
wise vertical velocity distribution of the cycloidal rotor with in Fig. 12. There are DSVs and downwash in the rotor cage
AR = 4 is shown in Fig. 10 (c). There are downwash in the of both 2D and 3D cycloidal rotors. The downwash reduces
rotor cage in all span-wise sections. But the center part of the effective AOA of the blade when blade is traveling through
the blade experiences stronger downwash than the blade tip. the lowest point of its trace. Hence no DSV is observed when
The vortex structures of the cycloidal rotors with different the blade pitch angle reaches maximum. The 2D cycloidal
aspect ratios in one cycle are shown in Table 3. It can be seen rotor and 3D cycloidal rotor have quite similar aerodynamic
that for all cases in this section, the pitching motion of the forces and vorticity contour when the blade is located at the
blade induces 3D dynamic stall. DSVs are highly distorted upper part of its trace. The major differences occur when the
and the X shape vortex can be clearly seen. The span-wise blade is located at the lower part of its trace. This is due to
length of the DSVs increases with the aspect ratio and the the fact that the 2D cycloidal rotor has much stronger down-
BTVs induce strong span-wise flow and downwash upon the wash in the right part of the rotor cage than the 3D cycloidal
blade. rotor, as shown in Fig. 10(a) and Fig. 11. For the 2D case,
when the blade passes through the lowest point of its trace,
the strong downwash increases the inflow velocity experienced

Fig. 12 Flow field of cycloidal rotor observed at symmetric

plane in moving frame.

Fig. 11 Scaled radial and tangential aerodynamic forces gener- Fig. 13 Primary influencing factors upon aerodynamic forces of
ated by a blade in one cycle. cycloidal rotors.
Effects of blade aspect ratio and taper ratio 1131

by the blade. At the same time, there are strong parallel BVIs the cycloidal rotors with very large pitching amplitude are pri-
induced by the Leading Edge Vortex (LEV) and Trailing Edge marily affected by the unsteady aerodynamic effects due to
Vortex (TEV) from the preceding blade (Fig. 12 (a), h = 45°, blade pitching motion.
Blade 4), and thus there are strong force peaks when the blade
is located at the lower right part of its trace.1,18 This is the 5.3. Effects of taper ratio at large pitching amplitude
major source of very large horizontal force peak and torque
peak in the 2D model. For the 3D cycloidal rotor, the BTVs Another important parameter of the blade platform is the
tend to diminish the downwash in the right part of the rotor taper ratio. In order to understand the effects of the taper
cage. There is no increased inflow velocity or BVI induced ratio, three numerical simulation models listed below are
by DSVs (Fig. 12(b), h = 45°, Blade 4). Therefore 3D cycloi- developed and the results of them are compared against each
dal rotor has much smoother force curve, and smaller horizon- other (Fig. 14).
tal force and torque peaks.1
The aerodynamic forces of cycloidal rotors are influenced (1) The first model is based on blade element theory so
by pitching motion of the blade, the virtual airfoil effects of that the blade is divided into a number of blade ele-
the blade, the effects of BTVs, the interactions among the ments. The CFD simulations using 2D model with dif-
blades and the effects of viscosity. The interactions among ferent blade chord lengths are carried out, and then the
the blades primarily involve the downwash in the rotor cage aerodynamic forces of the rotor are integrated along
and the BVIs induced by DSVs and BTVs, as shown in blade span based on the blade element forces. This
Fig. 13. According to previous research, it is found that due model does not consider the effects of BTVs and is
to relatively high reduced frequency, the aerodynamic forces denoted as Blade Element Method (BEM) model
due to viscosity are very small in comparison with the forces (Fig. 14 (a)).
due to pressure.32 (2) The second is the CFD simulation model based on 2D
For the 3D cases discussed in this section, it can be seen rotors that shares the same Mean Aerodynamic Chord
that the BTVs make the DSVs highly distorted and no signif- (MAC) length as the 3D model, and the equivalent blade
icant parallel BVI induced by DSVs can be observed.1 The platform is assumed to be a rectangle. The aerodynamic
BTVs also can induce the perpendicular BVIs and change forces are then integrated along blade span. This model
the intensity of the downwash in the rotor cage. However, also does not consider the effects of BTVs and is denoted
although these cases have quite different aspect ratios, they as Equivalent MAC (EM) model (Fig. 14 (b)).
have quite similar FM and force generation history. The (3) The third model is the full 3D CFD simulation model
effects of BTVs and downwash do not have significant impact that involves the effects of the DSVs and BTVs. This
on the performance of the cycloidal rotors. Hence we can reach model is denoted as 3D model (Fig. 14 (c)).
the conclusion that the time averaged aerodynamic forces of

Fig. 14 Numerical simulation models for cycloidal rotors with different taper ratios.

Fig. 15 Time averaged aerodynamic forces of cycloidal rotors with different taper ratios.
1132 Y. HU et al.

5.4. Cases with different taper ratios according to the wing theory, it is expected that the cycloidal
rotors with taper ratio near 0.4 and 0.5 would be more effi-
The comparison of the time averaged rotor forces is shown in cient.33 However in Fig. 6, the FM increases with taper ratio.
Fig. 15 and the comparison of FM is shown in Fig. 6. For the The instantaneous aerodynamic forces produced by one
test cases in Fig. 15, all blades share the same span and root blade in one cycle are shown in Fig. 16. When TR = 1, the
chord length but different tip chord lengths. The forces of BEM model produces the same blade forces as the EM model.
cycloidal rotors increase with taper ratio. The blades with It can be seen that although the BTVs do not influence the time
smaller taper ratio have slightly larger aspect ratio. Therefore averaged forces of the cycloidal rotor, they change the instan-

Fig. 16 Force generation history of one blade in one cycle obtained by different simulation models.
Effects of blade aspect ratio and taper ratio 1133

taneous aerodynamic forces of the rotor. The BTVs make the is very large negative vertical force due to very strong down-
dynamic stall smoother than the predicted 2D models. This is wash in the rotor cage.30 In this case, the efficiency of the rotor
the same as the test cases with different aspect ratios. drops. For the test cases defined in Table 2, the highest C/R is
The downwash velocity distributions at the mid-span plane 0.38. The larger the taper ratio is, the closer the C/R is to 0.5;
and the YOZ plane are shown in Fig. 17. It can be seen that the therefore the rotor with larger taper ratio has better efficiency
taper ratio does not significantly change the downwash in the in hover.
rotor cage. The test cases have quite similar downwash velocity From Fig. 15, it also can be seen that for the same taper
distribution in the rotor cage. ratio, results from BEM and EM model match each other well.
All three models produce quite similar time averaged vertical
5.5. Discussion on effects of taper ratio force and torque except the horizontal force. This confirms
that the 3D effects play a secondary role on time averaged
The instantaneous forces of the 2D cycloidal rotor blade with aerodynamic forces.
different chord lengths are shown in Fig. 18. Since the rotors According to Spentzos et al., if the blade reduced frequency
with larger C/R have higher reduced frequency, the time inter- is high, the motion of the body dominates.27 For the blade of
val of positive tangential force is wider and the magnitude of cycloidal rotor, the reduced frequency is defined as
the positive tangential force is larger. Positive tangential force xC xC C
reduces the time averaged torque as well as the power of the j¼ ¼ ¼ ð3Þ
2Vt 2xR 2R
cycloidal rotor.30 However, if the C/R is greater than 0.6, there

Fig. 17 Velocity distribution of cycloidal rotors with different taper ratios.

Fig. 18 Instantaneous blade forces with different airfoil chord lengths (2D model, x = 900 r/min, NACA0015).
1134 Y. HU et al.

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