Aerospace 2015, 2(4), 555-580; doi:10.3390/aerospace2040555
CFD Study of an Annular-Ducted Fan Lift System for VTOL Aircraft
UAV Research Institute, Northwestern Polytechnical University, 127 West Youyi Road, Xi’an 710072, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Paul Bruce
Received: 6 August 2015 / Revised: 17 September 2015 / Accepted: 22 September 2015 / Published: 29 September 2015
(This article belongs to the Collection Feature Papers in Aerospace)
Abstract
The present study aimed at assessing a novel annular-ducted fan lift system for VTOL aircraft through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The power and lift efficiency of the lift fan system in hover mode, the lift and drag in transition mode, the drag and flight speed of the aircraft in cruise mode and the pneumatic coupling of the tip turbine and jet exhaust were studied. The results show that the annular-ducted fan lift system can have higher lift efficiency compared to the rotor of the Apache helicopter; the smooth transition from vertical takeoff to cruise flight needs some extra forward thrust to overcome a low peak of drag; the aircraft with the lift fan system enclosed during cruise flight theoretically may fly faster than helicopters and tiltrotors based on aerodynamic drag prediction, due to the elimination of rotor drag and compressibility effects on the rotor blade tips; and pneumatic coupling of the tip turbine and jet exhaust of a 300 m/s velocity can provide enough moment to spin the lift fan. The CFD results provide insight for future experimental study of the annular-ducted lift fan VTOL aircraft. View Full-TextKeywords:
computational fluid dynamics (CFD); vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL); annular-ducted lift fan; helicopter; aircraft; tip turbine; tiltrotor
▼
Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).
Scifeed alert for new publications
Never miss any articles matching your research from any publisher- Get alerts for new papers matching your research
- Find out the new papers from selected authors
- Updated daily for 49'000+ journals and 6000+ publishers
- Define your Scifeed now
Share & Cite This Article
MDPI and ACS Style
Jiang, Y.; Zhang, B.; Huang, T. CFD Study of an Annular-Ducted Fan Lift System for VTOL Aircraft. Aerospace 2015, 2, 555-580.
Related Articles
Article Metrics
Comments
[Return to top]
Aerospace
EISSN 2226-4310
Published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland
RSS
E-Mail Table of Contents Alert