Development of a Cross-Flow Fan Rotor for Vertical Take-Off and Landing Aircraft.

摘要

This study determined the optimum number of blades on a 4-inch diameter cross-flow fan rotor such that the rotor produced a thrust-to-weight ratio over one, which will make vertical take-off possible. The commercial computational fluid dynamics software ANSYS CFX, along with the commercial computer-aided design software SolidWorks, was used to model and perform a parametric study on the number of rotor blades. This parametric study focused on the thrust output, power requirement, and efficiency of each design in order to determine the optimum number of blades at 8,000 RPM. After the analytical study was complete, working models of three different rotors were fabricated and tested to validate the results found using ANSYS CFX. The experimental and analytical models were successfully compared at speeds ranging from 4,000 to 7, 000 RPM.