Comparative studies have been carried out on two axial flow fan rotors of controlled vortex design (CVD), at their design flowrate, in order to investigate the effects of circumferential forward skew on blade aerodynamics. The studies were based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD), validated on the basis of global performance and hot wire flow field measurements. The computations indicated that the forward-skewed blade tip modifies the rotor inlet condition along the entire span, due to its protrusion to the relative inlet flow field. This leads to the rearrangement of spanwise blade load distribution, increase of losses along the dominant part of span, and converts the prescribed spanwise blade circulation distribution towards a free vortex flow pattern. Due to the above, reduction in both total pressure rise and efficiency was established. By moderation of the radial outward flow on the suction side, being especially significant for non-free vortex blading, forward sweep was found to be particularly useful for potential reduction of near-tip loss in CVD rotors. Application of reliable CFD-based design systems was recommended for systematic consideration and control of both load- and loss-modifying effects due to non-radial blade stacking.

Phased array microphone measurements and beamforming technology have been applied in the investigation of counter-rotating open rotors in an attempt to better understand their noise sources. It has already been presented in the literature that the beamforming results of rotating coherent noise sources, typical tonal noise sources for counter-rotating open rotors, will be localized to their respective Mach radii rather than their true noise source locations. Building on these results, the present beamforming investigation provides an approach for identifying tonal and broadband noise sources of counter-rotating open rotors. The methods provide a means for localizing noise sources and identifying noise source mechanisms truly responsible for given components of tonal and broadband noise. Groups of interaction tones that can have the greatest impact on the sound field of counter-rotating open rotors are singled out, and the most dominant noise sources of broadband noise are determined.

Highly accurate and precise heave decay tests on a sphere with a diameter of 300 mm were completed in a meticulously designed test setup in the wave basin in the Ocean and Coastal Engineering Laboratory at Aalborg University, Denmark. The tests were dedicated to providing a rigorous benchmark dataset for numerical model validation. The sphere was ballasted to half submergence, thereby floating with the waterline at the equator when at rest in calm water. Heave decay tests were conducted, wherein the sphere was held stationary and dropped from three drop heights: a small drop height, which can be considered a linear case, a moderately nonlinear case, and a highly nonlinear case with a drop height from a position where the whole sphere was initially above the water. The precision of the heave decay time series was calculated from random and systematic standard uncertainties. At a 95% confidence level, uncertainties were found to be very low—on average only about 0.3% of the respective drop heights. Physical parameters of the test setup and associated uncertainties were quantified. A test case was formulated that closely represents the physical tests, enabling the reader to do his/her own numerical tests. The paper includes a comparison of the physical test results to the results from several independent numerical models based on linear potential flow, fully nonlinear potential flow, and the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations. A high correlation between physical and numerical test results is shown. The physical test results are very suitable for numerical model validation and are public as a benchmark dataset.

Counter-rotating rotor configurations are considered more efficient than their single rotor counterparts. Consequently, the coaxially aligned rotors have appeared in the fixed-wing aircraft sector and are appearing in the quickly developing unmanned aerial vehicle sector, where they are expected to play a significant role, especially for long haul and heavy load configurations. As their noise levels have proven to be rather significant, the localization and reduction of the noise of such counter-rotating blade sets is a relevant topic of interest. One of the dominant contributors to counter-rotating rotor noise is interaction tones. Interaction tones appear at combinations of the harmonics of the blade passing frequencies of the two rotors and are significant throughout the spectra. In this paper, an automated method is presented that analyzes an entire series of beamforming noise source maps using principal component analysis-based methods in order to identify the dominant noise generation mechanisms in frequency bins that are associated with interaction tones. The processing technique is presented herein through the investigation of counter-rotating open rotor datasets developed for a fixed-wing aircraft configuration. With the proposed method, an objective mean has been provided for separating apart contributions from various noise sources, which can be automated, making the processing and investigation of large sets of measurement data rather quick and easy. The method has been developed such that the results of the analysis are easy to comprehend even without specialized prior knowledge in the area of counter-rotating rotor noise.