Reconstruction and prediction of the rotor wake flow field in hovering state

Abstract

A clear understanding of the flow structure and evolution of the rotor wake flow field is one of the key problems to be solved in the development of rotor aerodynamics. The tip vortices are the primary structure of the rotor wake flow field. A theoretical model of the vortex ring was established to verify the feasibility of flow field reconstruction. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) is used to measure the two-dimensional velocity field in the rotor wake. Because of the wandering motion of tip vortices, a new conditional average algorithm is proposed to deal with the flow field. On this basis, it is proposed that the plane interval of the rotor wake flow field reconstructed by interpolation should be less than 20 deg. The vortex core radius is obtained by the analysis method based on the circulation. A Back Propagation (BP) neural network was established to predict the axial and radial positions of the tip vortices and the radius of the vortex core. The inputs are the vortex ages measured by the experiment, and the outputs are the position and radius of the vortex core under any vortex ages. The predicted values were in good agreement with the experimental results. The study provides further analytical methods and new insights for the characteristics and evolution of tip vortices.