Hover and wind-tunnel testing of shrouded rotors for improved micro air vehicle design

The shrouded-rotor configuration has emerged as the most popular choice for rotary-wing Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs), because of the inherent safety of the design and the potential for significant performance improvements. However, traditional design philosophies based on experience with large-scale ducted propellers may not apply to the low-Reynolds-number (∼20,000) regime in which MAVs operate. An experimental investigation of the effects of varying the shroud profile shape on the performance of MAV-scale shrouded rotors has therefore been conducted. Hover tests were performed on seventeen models with a nominal rotor diameter of 16 cm (6.3 in) and various values of diffuser expansion angle, diffuser length, inlet lip radius and blade tip clearance, at various rotor collective angles. Compared to the baseline open rotor, the shrouded rotors showed increases in thrust by up to 94%, at the same power consumption, or reductions in power by up to 62% at the same thrust. These improvements surpass those predicted by momentum theory, due to the additional effect of the shrouds in reducing the non-ideal power losses of the rotor. Increasing the lip radius and decreasing the blade tip clearance caused performance to improve, while optimal values of diffuser angle and length were found to be 10&;Measurements were also made of the wake velocity profiles and the shroud surface pressure distributions. The uniformity of the wake was improved by the presence of the shrouds and by decreasing the blade tip clearance, resulting in lower induced power losses. For high net shroud thrust, a favorable pressure distribution over the inlet was seen to be more important than in the diffuser. Strong suction pressures were observed above the blade-passage region on the inlet surface; taking advantage of this phenomenon could enable further increases in thrust. However, trade studies showed that, for a given overall aircraft size limitation, and ignoring considerations of the safety benefits of a shroud, a larger-diameter open rotor is more likely to give better performance than a smaller-diameter shrouded rotor.;The open rotor and a single shrouded-rotor model were subsequently tested at a single collective in translational flight, at angles of attack from 0° (axial flow) to 90° (edgewise flow), and at various advance ratios. In axial flow, the net thrust and the power consumption of the shrouded rotor were lower than those of the open rotor. In edgewise flow, the shrouded rotor produced greater thrust than the open rotor, while consuming less power. Measurements of the shroud surface pressure distributions illustrated the extreme longitudinal asymmetry of the flow around the shroud, with consequent pitch moments much greater than those exerted on the open rotor. Except at low airspeeds and high angles of attack, the static pressure in the wake did not reach ambient atmospheric values at the diffuser exit plane; this challenges the validity of the fundamental assumption of the simple-momentum-theory flow model for short-chord shrouds in translational flight.