The Origin and Structure of Trailing Vortices in Aerodynamics

Abstract

The helicopter rotor wake is among the most complex flow-fields in aerodynamics. Despite the fact that a large amount of computational and experimental work on the rotor wake has been published, little of a quantitative nature is known about the origin of the main component of the rotor wake, the tip-vortex, as a function of the rotor speed, rotor blade geometry, and angle of attack. The primary objective of this work is to predict the formation of the rotor tip vortex as a function of physical parameters such as angle of attack, rotor speed, and blade aspect ratio. While the rotor-blade tip-vortex is of primary interest, the techniques developed are applicable to fixed wings as well.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 06, 2001
Accession Number
ADA392420

Entities

People

  • A. T. Conlisk
  • N. M. Komarath

Organizations

  • Ohio State University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Boundary Layer
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Fixed Wing Aircraft
  • Flow Visualization
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Fluid Mechanics
  • Geometry
  • Hydrodynamics
  • Physics Laboratories
  • Refractive Index
  • Three Dimensional
  • Two Dimensional
  • Viscous Flow

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics.