Influence of the Reynolds Number on the Aerodynamic Performance of a Small Rotor

Abstract

The use of small rotors has increased due their applications in drones and UAVs. In order to improve the global performance of these aerial vehicles, it is necessary to understand the aerodynamics of small rotors, since this is related to the global energy consumption of such vehicles. Most of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies found in the literature that are related to the analysis of small rotors employ fully turbulent models, despite the low-to-moderate Reynolds numbers of these applications. This paper presents CFD simulations for a small rotor at hover at different Reynolds numbers using fully turbulent and transitional SST k−ω turbulence models. Numerical results show that thrust and torque are close to experimental measurements, showing differences of less than 5% for both fully turbulent and transitional models. However, significant differences were observed between the fully turbulent and the transitional models when studying the boundary-layer development and separation. As the Reynolds number was increased, it was observed that at the tip of the blade, these differences were reduced, but at mid-span, the differences were more obvious.