Cycloidal rotors are a novel form of propulsion system which can be adapted to various forms of transport such as air and marine vehicles, with a geometrical design completely different from the conventional screw propeller. Research on cycloidal rotor design began in the early 1930s and has developed throughout the years to the point where such devices now operate as propulsion systems for various aerospace applications such as MAVs, UAVs and compound helicopters. The majority of research conducted on the cycloidal rotor's aerodynamic performance have not assessed mitigating the dynamic stall effect which can have a negative impact on the rotor performance when the blades operate in the rotor retreating side. A solution has been proposed to mitigate the dynamic stall effect through employment of active, compliant leading edge morphing. A two dimensional, implicit unsteady analysis was conducted using commercial CFD software package STAR CCM+, on a two bladed cycloidal rotor. An overset mesh technique otherwise known as a chimera mesh, was used to apply complex transient motions to the simulations. Active, compliant leading edge morphing is applied to an oscillating NACA 0015 airfoil to attempt to mitigate the dynamic stall whilst maintaining the positive dynamic Cl contributions. It was verified that by applying a pulsed input leading edge rotational morphing schedule, the leading edge vortex does not fully form and the large ow separation is prevented. Further work in this investigation will focus on coupling the active, leading edge motion to the cycloidal rotor model with aim to maximising aerodynamic performance.
展开▼
