Experiments and simulations of a propulsive rotor with synthetic jets for aerodynamic performance enhancement

Understanding the effects of synthetic jets in a highly three-dimensional crossflow is critical for the improvement of active flow control techniques to enhance the aerodynamic performance of propulsive rotors. In this paper, a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of a rotor is used to complement experiments results in order to gain more insight into the behavior of the flow when flow control parameters are changed, including the position and momentum coefficient of the synthetic jet actuators mounted inside three rotor blades. To this end, a complete rotor assembly with a NACA 0012 airfoil was simulated at 250, 500, 750 and 1000 revolutions per minute (RPM) with blade pitch angles of 2, 5, and 8 degrees. The rotor thrust and torque were measured experimentally using a high-capacity load cell, while laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) measurements were obtained near the root, middle, and tip regions of the blade. The commercial software ANSYS FLUENT was used to compute the velocity components and aerodynamic forces around the blades. The results of both methods were compared to increase the reliability of the analysis.