Characteristics of Rotor Blade Tip Vortices with Spanwise Slots

Abstract

The evolutionary structure of tip vortices has been investigated with a two-dimensional LDV system for a plain and a slotted blade, respectively. To analyze the effect of slots which bypasses a part of main stream into the tip face, velocity profiles, vortex sizes, their displacements and turbulence intensities during one revolution of the rotor were measured by the phase averaging process. For the comparison of circumferential velocity components of the plain blade and the slotted blade, the peak values of the slotted blade were lower than those of the plain blade, and axial velocity components of the slotted blade were considerably larger than those of the plain blade. The slotted rotor blade enlarged the core size and made the vortex delayed compared with those of the plain blade at the same wake ages. Turbulence profiles had peaks inside the core radii and decayed gradually in the radial direction of vortex coordinate. Also, using a quasi 3-D LDV measurement technique the budget of turbulence kinetic energy was analyzed in radial direction of the vortex core.