Toward Understanding the Aerodynamic Efficiency of a Hovering Micro-Rotor

Manikandan Ramasamy∗ Bradley Johnson† J. Gordon Leishman‡

Department of Aerospace Engineering

Glenn L. Martin Institute of Technology
University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742

Abstract Cl lift coefficient

CT rotor thrust coefficient, = T /ρAΩ2 R2
The velocity field of a micro-rotor was measured using CP rotor power coefficient, = P/ρAΩ3 R3
digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV) to help iden- D rotor blade sectional drag/unit span
tify the pertinent flow features and the various sources of DL disk loading, = T /A
potential aerodynamic losses. These flow measurements FM figure of merit
were complemented by balance measurements of rotor L rotor blade sectional lift/unit span
thrust and power. Several rotor blades were used with dif- PL power loading, = T /P
ferent planforms, twist distributions, and airfoil profiles. r radial distance
In each case, the operating blade tip Reynolds number r0 initial core radius of the tip vortex
was nominally 35,000. A unique aspect of the work was rc core radius of the tip vortex
the use of advanced DPIV correlation algorithms, which R radius of the blade
allowed for high-resolution flow measurements. This al- Rev vortex Reynolds number, = Γv /ν
lowed for the accurate estimation of the spanwise lift and t time
drag along the blade from sectional circulation measure- S perimeter of the loop integral
ments and wake velocity deficiency characteristics, re- T rotor thrust
spectively. Sharpening the leading- and trailing-edges of Vr radial velocity
the blade was shown to reduce the wake thickness and pro- Vθ swirl velocity
file losses, resulting in improved rotor performance. The Vz axial velocity
twisted blades also showed improved levels of rotor per- u, v, w velocities along x, y, z directions, respectively
formance. The evolutionary characteristics of the tip vor- x, y, z rotor coordinate system
tices, including the growth rate of the vortex cores and α Lamb’s constant, = 1.25643
the peak swirl velocities, were also measured. The vortex Γ circulation, = 2πrVθ
contained a circulation that was found to be about 80% Γb bound circulation
of the maximum sectional bound circulation, and showed Γc circulation at the core radius
slow dissipative characteristics with increasing wake age. Γv circulation at large distances
The circulation contained within the viscous core was δ ratio of apparent to actual kinematic viscosity
about 50% of the total circulation at early wake ages, and ζ wake age
continued to increase with wake age. ν kinematic viscosity
ρ air density
σ rotor solidity
Nomenclature ψ azimuthal position of blade
Ω rotational speed of the rotor
A rotor disk area 2-C two-component
c blade chord 3-C three-component
Cd drag coefficient 2-D two-dimensional
Cd0 minimum (profile) drag coefficient 3-D three-dimensional
∗ Assistant
Research Scientist. mani@glue.umd.edu
† MintaMartin Intern. bjo212@glue.umd.edu
‡ Minta Martin Professor. leishman@umd.edu Introduction
Presented at the American Helicopter Society International
Specialists Meeting on Unmanned Rotorcraft, January 23–25, While many types of manned aircraft play a role in the
2007, Phoenix, AZ. 2007
c by M. Ramasamy et al. Published military mission, military planners foresee a day in the
by the AHS International with permission. near future when swarms of micro air vehicles (or MAVs)

1
can be used to augment combat effectiveness and reduce
casualties. A MAV has been defined variously as an air-
craft having a maximum dimension of 15 cm (≈6 in) to as
much as 40 cm (≈16 in), with the requirement that they
are small and light enough so that they can be backpacked
by single soldiers into the battlefield. MAVs have the ob-
vious advantage of small scale and correspondingly low
radar cross-section and stealthiness. They can give good
reconnaissance capability with rapid deployment and, in
many cases, real-time data acquisition capability such as
imaging. It is expected that in the future MAVs will take
on larger roles, and will support missions that are cur-
rently performed by manned aircraft.
MAVs are usually required to hover, and previous
MAV designs have encompassed rotating-wings of vari-
ous types, including ducted and unducted rotor concepts.
But existing designs fall well short of the desired pay-
load and endurance objectives because they have not yet
shown sufficiently good aerodynamic efficiency. Several
experiments have clearly shown that their aerodynamic ef-
ficiency is substantially lower than their higher Reynolds
number rotor counterparts (Refs. 1–3). One main issue
affecting efficiency is that rotating-wing MAVs operate at
blade chord Reynolds numbers that may be three orders
of magnitude lower than full-scale helicopters. This pro-
duces thick boundary layers on the blades, which results
in large values of profile drag. The resulting poor lift-to-
drag ratios of the blade sections (which may be 5 or lower)
substantially decrease the overall operating efficiency of
the rotor system. In concert with this effect, is the rela-
tively higher induced power requirements of MAV-scale
rotors, as well as higher rotational and turbulent losses in
the wakes downstream of the rotating blades.
While a number of approaches have been examined to
try to improve rotor performance (Refs. 2–5), only mod-
est gains have been attained. One key to improved per-
formance obviously lies within understanding the viscous
dominated wake structure and the need to reduce induced
losses not just profile losses. In fact, there is reason to
believe that induced (wake) and profile (blade airfoils) ef-
fects are strongly interdependent at this small scale, and
that induced and viscous effects cannot be isolated and
examined separately to the same degree as they can on
full-scale rotor systems. For example, we should not for-
get that the nature of the MAV rotor flow probably violates
most, if not all, of the assumptions made in the develop-
ment of the fundamental theories of rotor analyses. What
we lack for now are methods that allow for small-scale
rotor design, and until such methods become established,
MAVs will continue to demonstrate much lower levels of
performance capability than is desired.
To this end, the objective of the present study was
to perform several performance (i.e., thrust and power)
and high-fidelity flow field measurements of a micro-rotor
2
with different rotor blade planforms. This includes ap-
proaches towards understanding methods of reducing the
profile losses (by varying the airfoil shape, nose sharp-
ness, and blade thickness distribution) and induced losses
(by varying blade planform and twist shapes). The ob-
jective was to help further understand the flow field char-
acteristics of micro-rotors that, in turn, may help in the
future validate mathematical models, and to develop de-
sign strategies to improve upon their performance. Simul-
taneous measurement of rotor performance and flow field
analysis is required to more clearly understand their aero-
dynamics. Also, it is necessary to estimate the sectional
performance across the blades, which is critical to develop
strategies aimed at improving the aerodynamic efficiency
of micro-rotors. It is not yet clear whether conventional
rotor design strategies can be used effectively to this end.
Sources of Rotor Losses
Increasing the flight performance of a rotating-wing MAV
(i.e., their speed, range, endurance, etc.) directly depends
on improving their aerodynamic efficiency. One measure
of hovering performance is the figure of merit (FM ). Fig-
ure 1 shows current performance levels of micro-rotors in
terms of their measured FM as well as the intended de-
sign efficiency goal of 0.8 or possibly higher. Figure 1
shows that for a given level of induced losses progres-
sively smaller improvements in the FM can be achieved
by improving upon the efficiency of the airfoils through
3/2
higher values of Cl /Cd (i.e., the lift-to drag) after a cer-
tain FM threshold is reached. Also, it shows that unless
3/2
the the values of Cl /Cd can exceed at least 10, which
appears high for low Reynolds number airfoils (Ref. 5),
there is no possibility of increasing FM much above 0.6.
Induced and rotational losses must be reduced in unison
with profile losses to produce any real improvement in
overall hovering efficiency. However, at low Reynolds
numbers profile and induced losses have likely interde-
pendent influences, and improving one over the other is
no guarantee that improved rotor efficiency levels will, in
fact, be obtained.
Even though FM can give one measure the relative hov-
ering performance of MAVs, it is the power loading that
defines the overall hovering performance in terms of thrust
produced for the energy expended. The power loading is
defined as
T CT
PL = = (1)
P CP ΩR
Rewiting Eq. 1 in terms of FM using simple momentum
theory considerations gives
√
2ρ FM
PL = √ (2)
DL
Figure 1: Rotor FM variations and goals in terms in-
duced losses and blade section aerodynamic efficiency.
Figure 2: Power loading versus effective disk loading.
It is apparent from Eq. 2 that the power loading improves
with an increase in FM and a reduction in disk loading.
Figure 2 shows the values of power loading versus equiv-
alent disk loading for different scale hover-capable air-
craft and biological mechanisms, which also operate over
a wide range of Reynolds numbers based on blade or wing
chord. Notice the logarithmic scale on both axes. The
fundamental momentum theory given by Eq. 2 seems to
hold good at all scales, including insects and humming-
birds, as it should bearing in mind it is simply a state-
ment of the theoretical ideal limit as given by Newton’s
2nd Law. Clearly the key to improved hovering efficiency
(best power loading) is to operate at a low disk loading
and at as high a figure of merit as possible at that disk
loading.
It is convenient to idealize total rotor losses into the
constituents of induced (i), profile (0), and “other” (o)
losses losses. The other losses have their source in the
rotational and turbulent flow inside the rotor wake, and
are difficult to quantify a priori because these are inter-
dependent functions of profile and induced losses. On a
rotor operating at full-scale Reynolds numbers, rotational
and turbulent losses are low when the rotor is operating in
3
Figure 3: Relationship between rotor power loading
and FM versus blade loading coefficient.
its normal working state. Rewriting Eq. 1 gives
CT
PL =
ΩR(CP0 +CPi +CPo )
CT
= 3/2
! (3)
C σCd0
ΩR κ √T + +CPo
2 8
In the first instance, it is convenient to group the other in-
duced and rotational losses into an average induced power
factor κ. Differentiating Eq. 3 with respect to CT and
equating it to zero results in a maximum PL at a FM of
2/(3κ). But κ is always greater than one because there
are always non-ideal induced losses, and so the maximum
power loading for the rotor system will be achieved when
when the FM is smaller than 2/3, as shown in Fig. 3. In
this particular case, κ is assumed to be 1.8, which is con-
sistent with the measured levels of performance (as given
by the data points) for a micro-rotor. Because other losses
are involved, this is a value that is considerably higher
than those typically found with rotors operating at higher
tip chord Reynolds numbers.
It will be seen from Fig. 3 that the required blade load-
ing coefficient at the most efficient or “optimum” hover-
ing condition is extremely low, and this requires a large
rotor disk area. Because of overall maximum allowable
rotor size and weight constraints for a MAV, the rotor must
generally operate at a higher disk loadings and CT values
than its optimum value. However, Fig. 3 also shows that
the power loading curve is relatively flat after the best op-
erating point is reached, suggesting that the performance
losses associated with operating at slightly higher disk
loadings are modest. Nevertheless, the design point for
the most efficient rotor operation is clear.
Even though Fig. 1 assumes that effect of the profile and
induced losses on the FM of the rotor system operate as in-
dependent parameters, these two effects actually have in-
terdependent influences, especially at low blade Reynolds
 Tip vortex
ζ = 10 deg

Tip vortex
ζ = 190 deg
Tip
Turbulent vortices
vortex sheet

Rotor shaft

Figure 4: Representative laser light sheet flow visualization image in the flow field of a rotating-wing MAV.

Rotor blade

Tip
vortices
Merging
boundary
layers
(vortex sheet)

Figure 5: A close up view of the flow field immediately behind the blade revealing the presence of thick turbulent
wake sheet with strong streamwise vorticity.

numbers. For example, κ will vary with CT , and rotational

and turbulent losses become a function of blade section
characteristics (profile losses).
There is evidence to support this hypothesis. Figure 4
shows a laser sheet flow visualization image of the flow
field of a hovering micro-rotor (Ref. 1). Several flow fea-
tures can be identified. One distinctive feature in the wake
of a micro-rotor is that the thicker boundary layers from
the top and bottom surfaces of the blades merge to result
in a relatively thick, turbulent wake sheets.
This can be more clearly seen in Fig. 5, which is the
image of the wake immediately behind the rotor blade.
Clearly organized streamwise vorticity (wake sheets) that Figure 6: Variation of two-dimensional profile drag co-
result from the merging of the thick boundary layers from efficient versus chord Reynolds number.
top and bottom surface of the blade can be noticed. These
wake sheets are a source of rotational and turbulent losses. Experimental Setup
It is known that an increase in the boundary layer thick-
ness increases profile drag at the lower chord Reynolds The current experiments involved the following: 1. Ro-
numbers below 50,000—see Fig. 6. Notice from Fig. 4 tor thrust and torque measurements using a mass balance
that at the outer edges of the sheets are rolled-up tip vor- and a torque sensor; 2. Two-component (2-C) DPIV mea-
tices, which seem to have relatively large viscous cores surements for estimating the sectional lift and drag com-
compared to the rotor dimensions. ponents along the blade span; 3. Three-component (3-C)

4
DPIV for measuring the overall rotor flow field.
Eight blade shapes were used in the study. All of the
blades were made of composite carbon fiber, and had cam-
bered, circular arc airfoil sections. The blades included:
1. Baseline rectangular blade, as shown in Fig. 7a.
2. Baseline blade with sharpened leading edge (SLE).
3. Baseline blade with sharpened leading edge and
trailing-edge (SLT).
4. Tapered blade (Type-1), as shown in Fig. 7b.
5. Tapered blade (Type-2), as shown in Fig. 7c.
6. Inverse tapered blade, as shown in Fig. 7d.
7. −9◦ linearly twisted blade.
8. −24◦ linearly twisted blade.
The rotor had a radius of 86 mm and was operated in a
two-bladed configuration. The baseline blade had a uni-
form chord of 19 mm, giving a blade aspect ratio of 3.7
and it had no twist or taper. The general dimensions of the
other blades are shown in Fig. 7. Each rotor system had
an effective thrust weighted solidity, σe , of 0.14 as given
by
  
σt − σr 1 3
σe = (σr − σt )y1 3 + − + y1 3 − y1 4 + σt
1 − y1 4 4
(4)
where the suffixes r and t represent the values at the root
and tip of the blade, respectively, and y1 represents the
point at which the taper starts. For the sharpened leading- Figure 7: Schematics showing the different rotor blade
and trailing-edge blades, the blades were sharpened from configuration used for the measurements.
the 15% and 85% chord locations by linearly reducing
their thickness towards the leading- and trailing-edges, re-
spectively.

made at rotational frequencies of 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60

Thrust and Torque Measurements
The rotor stand was rigidly attached to a linear reaction
torque sensor, which in turn was mounted on a micro mass
balance capable of measuring the rotor thrust at a pre-
cision of ±0.1 grams—see Fig. 8. The torque cell was
calibrated by using weights applied at a precisely known
arm. The analog signal from the torque sensor was ap-
propriately signal-conditioned and read into a digital data
acquisition system. The rotational speed of the rotor was
measured with a Hall-effect sensor mounted adjacent to
the rotor shaft.
A digital inclinometer was used to precisely set the
pitch angle of the blades at 75% span location. The ro-
tor system was positioned to thrust vertically downwards
(wake directed upward) to prevent ground effect interfer-
ence. The measurement of rotor thrust and torque were
Hz, and at collective pitch angles (measured at 75% ra-
dius) of 8◦ , 12◦ , 16◦ , and 20◦ . At each rotational speed,
torque and thrust data were collected over a 5 second pe-
riod. The final data was ensemble averaged and used to
find the the coefficients of thrust and power and the FM
of each rotor at the different pitch angles and blade tip
Reynolds numbers. The rotor was also tested at all con-
ditions without the blades attached to the hub to deter-
mine tares. These tares were subtracted from the thrust
and torque measurements taken with the blades attached.
To guarantee measurement precision and repeatability of
the experiment, multiple tests were made on each rotor at
the same pitch angles and rotational speeds. The measured
thrust was found to be within the instrument precision of
the mass balance, while the measured torque had an un-
certainty of ±3% of the mean value.

5

Figure 8: Schematic showing the experimental setup
used in measuring the performance of the micro-rotor.
Flow Field Measurements
The flow field analysis using the 2-C DPIV was limited
to five blade configurations: (1) The baseline blade; (2)
The baseline blade with sharp leading- and trailing-edges;
(3) The tapered blade (Type-1); (4) The inverse tapered
blade; (5) The −9◦ linearly twisted blade. The evolution-
ary characteristics of the wake and tip vortices were mea-
sured using 3-C DPIV only for the baseline case, although
other measurements are in progress. For all the flow field
analyses, the rotor was operated at 50 Hz, with a tip speed
of 27 m/s. The nominal operating tip Mach number and
Reynolds number based on chord were 0.082 and 35,000,
respectively.
The flow at the rotor was seeded with a thermally pro-
duced mineral oil fog. The average size of the seed parti-
cles were between 0.20 to 0.22 microns in diameter. For
the PIV experiments, the entire test area was uniformly
seeded before each sequence of measurements. For the
flow visualization, judicious adjustment of the seeder was
required to introduce concentrations of fog at the locations
needed to clearly identify specific types of flow structures.
The PIV system included dual Nd:YAG lasers that were
operated in phase synchronization with the rotor, the op-
tical arm to transmit the laser light into the region of in-
terrogation, a digital CCD camera with 1 mega-pixel res-
olution placed orthogonally to the laser light sheet for 2-
C measurements (see Fig. 9a), a high-speed digital frame
6
Y
r X
ND-Yag laser sheet
DPIV camera
(a) 2-C DPIV
ND-YAG Laser sheet
DPIV Cameras
(b) 3-C DPIV
Figure 9: Experimental set for 2-component and 3-
component PIV measurements.
grabber, and DPIV analysis software. For the 3-C mea-
surements, two digital CCD cameras with 2 mega-pixel
resolution were placed at an angle to satisfy the Scheim-
plfug criteria—see Fig. 9b. The lasers could be fired at
any blade phase angle around the azimuth, enabling flow
field measurements to be made at any required wake age.
The two lasers were fired with a pulse separation time of
2µs; this corresponded to less than 0.02◦ of blade motion.
Image Processing
For the 2-C DPIV measurements, a simple adaptive grid
was used to correlate the images to obtain the velocity vec-
tors. The details of this correlation technique have been
explained in Ref. 8. The entire region of focus was di-
vided in to 64× 64 nodes. An interrogation window of
24 pixels on either side with a 50% overlap was used for
correlation. The number of allowed interpolated vectors
was restricted to less than 1% of the total number vectors
in any one image.
 Figure 10: Schematic explaining the DPIV image processing technique used in the current study.
For the 3-C DPIV measurements, a new recursive
technique called deformation grid correlation was used
(Ref. 14). This procedure is similar to that of the sim-
ple recursive technique, however, the second window is
deformed in that it is both sheared and translated instead
of just using the simple translation—see Fig. 10. The pro-
cedure starts with the correlation of an interrogation win-
dow of a defined size (say, 64-by-64), which is the first
iteration. After the mean displacement of that region is
estimated, the interrogation window of the displaced im-
age is moved by integer pixel values for better correla-
tion in the second iteration. This third iteration starts by
moving the interrogation window of the displaced image
by sub-pixel values based on the displacement estimated
from second iteration. Following this, the interrogation
window is sheared twice (for integer and sub-pixel val-
ues) based on the velocity magnitudes from the neighbor-
ing nodes before performing a fourth and fifth iteration,
respectively.
Once the velocity is estimated after these five itera-
tions, the window is split into four equal windows (of
size 32 × 32). These windows are moved by the average
displacement estimated from the final iteration (using a
window size of 64 × 64) before starting the first iteration
at this resolution. This procedure can be continued until
the resolution required to properly resolve the flow field
is reached. The second interrogation window is deformed
until the particles remain at the same location after the
correlation. This technique, especially the introduction of
shear, has been shown in Ref. 15 to be appropriate for
measuring the high velocity gradients found inside rotor
7
wake flows. Detailed analysis on the uncertainty associ-
ated with the process has also been made in Ref. 15.
Results
The observed results have been analyzed in the following
categories: (1) Performance of the micro-rotor estimated
from mass balance and torque sensors; (2) Sectional lift
and drag estimation from the flow field analysis; (3) Evo-
lutionary characteristics of the tip vortices.
Performance
Figures 11a through 11c show the performance spolars
for the various blade configurations. All the plots include
measurements obtained at the four collective pitch angles
and five rotational speeds. The theoretical results were
made using the simple momentum theory and by estimat-
ing average values of κ and Cd0 in a least-squares sense
from the measured data. It should be understood that in
this context momentum theory may not be applicable be-
cause of its assumptions, especially at these low operating
Reynolds numbers. However, the results can still be used
as a baseline for comparative analysis; this is the purpose
here and it is not meant to be an endorsement of the appli-
cability of this theory.
Figure 11a shows the measurement made for three rect-
angular blade planforms: (1) The simple baseline; (2) The
baseline with sharpened leading edge (SLE); (3) The base-
line with sharpened leading- and trailing-edges (SLT). It
is apparent that the modified baseline cases (i.e., the SLE
 (a) Rectangular blade configurations
(b) Tapered blade configurations
(c) Twisted blade configurations
Figure 11: Power polars for the various rotor blade
configurations.
and SLT blades) perform better than the baseline. This
means that the amount of power consumed to produce the
same amount of thrust is smaller for the modified baseline
cases. It can be seen that CP0 , which represents the min-
imum power consumed (essentially at non-lifting or zero
CT ) is also smaller for the modified baseline cases. This
suggests that reducing the profile losses by sharpening the
leading-edge (or both the leading- and trailing-edges) is
effective for increasing rotor performance.
The improved performance in terms of FM are shown
8
(a) Rectangular blade configurations
(b) Tapered blade configurations
(c) Twisted blade configurations
Figure 12: Figure of merit for the various rotor blade
configurations.
in Fig. 12a. It can be seen that the measured FM was
improved by about 10% for the modified baseline cases.
Because all the three blades have identical rectangular
tip shapes and were operated under identical conditions,
the induced losses among these blades should also be
fairly similar, unless the modified boundary layer (from
the sharpening of the blades) altered the roll-up and evolu-
tionary characteristics of the wake and tip vortices. There
was some evidence of this, although only preliminary re-
sults have been measured thus far. Between the SLE and
SLT cases, the SLT blade showed a slightly better perfor-
mance than for the SLE blade.
Figure 11b shows the performance characteristics of
the tapered blade configurations. One immediate observa-
tion is that the inverse taper configuration performs poorly
when compared with the conventional tapered blades. In-
verse taper was designed to increase the operating tip
Reynolds number, which initially was felt that it may help
to reduce the profile losses (see Fig. 6). However, it is
apparent that the value of CP0 is actually higher for the
inverse tapered blade. On the other hand, at the same
pitch angle and at the same rotor tip speed, the inverse (a) Rectangular blade configurations
tapered blade produced significantly higher thrust than for
the other two blades.
Even though no substantial difference in the polars
could be observed between the two linearly tapered
blades, plotting their FM revealed some differences. Be-
cause the Taper-2 blade configuration produces substan-
tially lower thrust at lower pitch angles for the same
power, the FM values are also lower. Also, there is no
substantial increase in the lift characteristics of the tapered
blade when compared with the baseline case. This is con-
sistent with the observation made in Ref. 4.
Both of the twisted blades exhibited better performance
compared with the baseline (untwisted) case. It can be
seen that the twisted blades produced slightly higher val- (b) Tapered blade configurations
ues of CT for the same power when compared to the base-
line case. This is expected because the inflow distribu-
tion across the twisted blade should be more uniform (see
later), resulting in lower induced losses and better rotor
performance.
Figures 13a through 13c show the measured power
loading for all the rotor blade configurations with respect
to disk loading. It can be seen that the operating disk
loadings are substantially lower than for large scale rotors.
Consequently, their power loading is much better. This is
expected based on Eq. 1. However, hovering efficiencies
(the FM) are still relatively low at these disk loadings. Be-
cause rotor power varies with the cube power of rpm while
thrust increases by the square of rpm, operating the rotor (c) Twisted blade configurations
at a lower rotational speed and at higher pitch angles will Figure 13: Variation of measured power loading ver-
reduce the profile losses (Ref. 4). sus disk loading.

Bound Circulation & Sectional Lift
Measuring the sectional lift across the blade span is es-
sential to understand the aerodynamic performance of the
rotating-wing system. This is because the formation (roll-
up) and evolutional characteristics of tip vortices directly
depends upon the distribution of bound circulation across
the wing span (Refs. 16, 17). The distribution of lift
can be measured using static pressure taps. However, for
micro-scale rotors with such small, thin blades, estimating
the spanwise lift distribution using pressure sensors is not
possible. In such cases where direct measurement of pres-
sure is not possible, the concept of “bound” circulation
has been used successfully (Refs. 22–24, 17).
The concept of estimating the sectional lift per unit span
(from the bound circulation) at a specified span location
can be obtained from the Kutta—Joukowski theorem, as

9

Figure 14: Integration around the blade to estimate
the sectional “bound” circulation at a spanwise loca-
tion.
given by
L = ρ(Ωr)Γb (5)
The challenges involved in estimating a unique value
of circulation that can be related to the sectional lift of the
blade are discussed in Ref. 17. Care must be taken to en-
sure that the circulation contained within the integration
loop contains only the “bound” part. The shed and trailed
vorticity from the wake must be avoided, which otherwise,
would result in an incorrect estimation of the circulation.
In the case of a fixed-wing, this process is relatively eas-
ier because of the simpler downstream wake structure, ex-
cept near the wing tip. In the case of rotating-wings, the
presence of the returning wake makes the estimation of
“bound” circulation much more difficult. As suggested by
Taylor (Ref. 25), which was later confirmed by Bhagwat
& Leishman (Ref. 17), the integration loops must be mod-
ified to prevent the inclusion of any shed vorticity; this can
be achieved by keeping the appropriate branches of the in-
tegration contours perpendicular to the streamwise axis of
the shed wake.
The schematic in Fig. 14 shows the procedure followed
in estimating the sectional bound circulation along the
blade. The first loop completely encloses the rotor blade,
i.e., the diagonal of this primary integration loop connects
the leading- and trailing-edge of the blade section. In the
second step, the length of the integration loop is increased
by ∆x along all four sides. Subsequent integral loops in-
crease their path length in a similar manner by increasing
∆x on all four sides from the previous integral loop. Esti-
mates of the bound circulation, Γb were then made by nu-
merically evaluating the closed loop integral of the mea-
sured velocity field around a counterclockwise contour,
and fully encompassing the blade section without extra-
neous vorticity, i.e., by using
I point of origination and the blade tip) which counters the
Γb = V. ds = ∑ UT i (∆x) +WT i (∆z) (6)
c ¯
10
Figure 15a shows the results of this closed loop in-
tegration process for three representative spanwise loca-
tions. It can be seen that the estimated circulation us-
ing the primary integral loop is smaller. However, with
an increase in the integration path length, the sectional
circulation increases significantly before asymptoting to
a constant value. Similar results were seen at all span-
wise locations, except for very close to the blade tip. The
blade lift loading can then be determined from this asymp-
totic value of sectional circulation through the application
of the Kutta—Joukouski theorem (Eq. 5). The measured
peak bound circulation and the associated lift value per
unit span are given in Table 1.
Figures 15b to 15f show the estimated lift distribution
across the blade span for the five different blade configu-
rations. The figures also include the distribution of drag,
the estimation of which is detailed in a later section of this
paper. It can be seen that the lift is nearly linearly dis-
tributed in the baseline case and is also heavily tip loaded.
The value of sectional lift can be seen to reach its peak
value at approximately the 88.5% span location. It should
be appreciated that the experiment was performed with a
finite spatial resolution, especially along the spanwise di-
rection of the blade. As a result, the spanwise location at
which the maximum value of sectional lift was observed
may only be approximate. The reduction in sectional lift
observed near the tip is from the tip vortex, which induces
a downwash velocity that reduces the effective angle of
attack to nearly zero.
The lift distribution across the blade for the SLT cases
appears similar to that of the simple baseline case. How-
ever, the point of maximum lift appears slightly closer to-
wards the blade tip. The baseline blade with sharpened
leading edge (SLE) and the baseline blade with the SLT
were designed to reduce the profile losses. However, as
mentioned earlier, profile and induced losses are likely
to be interdependent at this scale, so reducing one is no
guarantee of better rotor performance As expected, the
overall thrust produced by the SLT blade (obtained from
the integration of the spanwise distribution of lift) ap-
pears slightly higher than for the baseline case—see Ta-
ble 2. The table also includes the performance values mea-
sured by the balance for comparison; good correlation was
found between the two techniques.
The lift distribution for the tapered blade was different
from all other blades because it had a double lift peak near
the tip. This is likely a result of a secondary trailed vortex
(other than the tip vortex), which results from the sudden
change in the circulation gradient at the point where the
taper starts. This secondary vortex has the same direction
of rotation as that of the conventional tip vortex. As a re-
sult, there is an upwash from a trailed vortex (between the
downwash induced by tip vortex. This limits the reduction
 Blade Span Maximum sectional Maximum sectional
configuration location (y/R) bound circulation, (Γb /ΩRc) lift (lbs/ft)
Baseline 0.884 0.355 0.36282
Baseline–sharp l.e. & t.e. 0.912 0.313 0.32672
Taper 0.855 0.411 0.40242
Inverse taper 0.912 0.3255 0.33974
Twist (−9◦ linear) 0.825 0.336 0.31763
Table 1: Measured values of maximum sectional bound circulation, maximum lift per unit span, and their corre-
sponding span locations: θ = 12◦ , ΩR = 27 m/s.

Blade configuration CT CP CT CP0 CPi CP

3/2 √
(Technique (Mass (Torque (Bound (Wake CT / 2 CP0 +CPi
used) balance) sensor) circulation) integral)
Baseline 0.015992 0.0030651 0.014678 0.0021507 0.0012574 0.0034081
Baseline - SLT 0.017223 0.0024482 0.015316 0.0016715 0.0013402 0.0030118
Taper 0.014586 0.0024443 0.013748 0.0020448 0.0011399 0.0031847
Inverse taper 0.016702 0.0036304 0.011909 0.0019163 0.0009189 0.0028352
Twist (−9◦ linear) 0.014814 0.0025662 0.016683 0.0018024 0.0015238 0.0033261
Table 2: Comparison of the coefficient of thrust and torque measured using different techniques: θ = 12◦ , ΩR = 27
m/s.
in angle of attack induced by the tip vortex. Consequently, across the entire blade (Ref. 26). The more the devia-
the lift produced at the blade span locations between the tion from uniform values of inflow, the poorer the aero-
two vortices shows higher values than for any other blade. dynamic performance would be. In the experiments, the
However, the overall integrated lift values produced by the value of inflow was measured just above the 1/4-chord of
tapered blades is still lower than for the baseline case. the blade. It can be seen from Fig. 16b, that as expected
The intent of the blade with inverse taper was to op- the twisted blades have more uniform inflow across the
erate the tip region at higher chord Reynolds numbers. entire blade span, while the profile losses are similar in
Even though the maximum thrust produced by the in- value to the baseline blade case (see Fig. 11c).
verse taper blade was found to be higher than any other The results for SLT blade were found to be similar to
blade, partially satisfying the intended goal of producing the baseline case. As a result, the induced losses can be
more thrust, the thrust estimated from the bound circula- assumed to be almost similar to that for the simple base-
tion concept seems to be substantially lower. Unlike the line case as it has essentially a similar linear inflow—see
tapered blade, the blade with inverse taper did not show Fig. 16a. However, sharpening the leading- and trailing-
a double lift peak. The presence of a secondary trailed edges of the blades significantly reduced the profile losses.
vortex with the tapered blade could have been identified
by making measurements in the spanwise plane, however,
this is left for future work.
Wake Integration & Profile Drag
The linearly twisted blade shows a lift distribution simi- Unlike the difficulties in the estimation of the sectional
lar to that of baseline case. Here, as mentioned earlier, the lift distribution across the blades using the bound circula-
intent of the twisted blade is to try to produce a more uni- tion approach, measuring the distribution of profile drag is
form inflow distribution across the disk, and thereby help slightly easier (Refs. 27–31). The momentum deficit ap-
to minimize induced power losses. This can be achieved proach, defined by Betz (Ref. 16), can be used to estimate
by operating the inboard part of the blade at higher angles the sectional drag by comparing the momentum upstream
of attack. Again, even though the lift distribution appears and downstream of the airfoil (wing section) (Ref. 30).
similar to that of baseline case, the overall thrust produced Wu et al. (Ref. 32) and Hackett & Sugavanam (Ref. 33)
by the twisted blade is higher than for any other blade further developed this equation for finite wings to separate
configuration—see Table 2. out the components of drag (induced and profile). A fur-
The importance of the inflow spanwise distribution can ther explanation of this approach is also given by McAlis-
be better understood by reverting back to simple rotor the- ter (Ref. 34).
ory, which suggests that a rotating-wing will have maxi- In the case of two-dimensional airfoils (infinite wings),
mum aerodynamic performance if the inflow is uniform there is no induced drag because of the absence of a trailed

11
 (a) Inverse taper (b) Baseline

(c) Baseline–sharp l.e.& t.e. (d) Taper

(e) Twist (f) Inverse taper

Figure 15: Performance measurement for various rotor blade configurations (solid line – lift, dashed line – drag).

wake and tip vortices. For finite wings, the tip vortices upstream and downstream of the blade section gives
are the predominant flow features and they primarily in- Z ∞ Z ∞
duce two components of velocity: 1. A spanwise velocity D= (p1 + ρU1 2 )dS − (p2 + ρU2 2 )dS (7)
−∞ −∞
from tip of the wing towards the root (VT ); 2. A veloc-
ity component normal to the wing resulting from the swirl By introducing total pressure, which is given by
velocity component of the tip vortex (WT ). This can be 1
P = p + ρ(U 2 +V 2 +W 2 ) (8)
better understood from Fig. 17. The resulting induced 2
velocity field inclines the lift vector aft, which upon re- the momentum balance in Eq. 7 (for an incompressible
solving introduces a component of drag (induced drag). flow) reduces to
By tilting the lift vector back, i.e, by having VT 1 = VT 2 Z ∞
1
Z∞
and WT 1 = WT 2 , it is possible to measure the profile drag D = (P1 − P2 )dS + ρ (UT 1 2 −UT 2 2 )dS(9)
−∞ 2 −∞
alone.
1
Z ∞
In reference to the rotating blade, a momentum balance − ρ ((VT 1 2 +WT 1 2 ) − (VT 2 2 +WT 2 2 ))dS
(10)
2 −∞

12
 Figure 17: Difference between 2-D and 3-D flow showing the source of induced drag.

(a) Baseline & twisted blade configurations

Figure 18: Measurement of profile drag per unit

span—velocity deficit behind the blade at the 94%
span location.
ing
1
Z ∞ Z ∞
D= (P1 − P2 )dS + ρ (UT 1 2 −UT 2 2 )dS (11)
−∞ 2 −∞
R ∞
Here, the integral −∞ (P1 − P2 )dS can be assumed to be
negligible because of there is a very small reduction of
pressure inside the rotor wake downstream of the blade.
Using continuity gives

(b) Tapered blade configurations

ρUT 1 = ρUT 2 (12)

and substituting this in Eq. 11 gives the expression for

Figure 16: Measured inflow distribution across the
drag as
span for various blade configurations. 1
Z ∞
D= ρ UT (UT 1 −UT 2 )dS (13)
where the subscripts 1 and 2 denote the upstream and 2 −∞ 2
downstream locations relative to the blade section, re- Here UT 1 − UT 2 is the decrease in flow velocity, which
spectively. The first two integrals represent the profile when multiplied by the mass flux ρUT 2 , gives the decre-
drag, and the third integral represents the induced drag ment in momentum per unit time in the drag direction.
(Ref. 34). Figure 18 shows the reduction in flow velocity behind
In the present study, the profile drag was estimated us- the rotor blade obtained from the measurements and the

13

Figure 19: Measured lift-to-drag ratio for various
blade configurations.
process outlined above. The drag per unit span measured
at different span locations for the various blades is shown
in Figs. 15. One immediate observation is that the drag is
approximately one-fifth of the estimated lift at that loca-
tion for all of the blades. This is consistent with the obser-
vations made by Laitone (Ref. 28) and Mueller (Ref. 29)
for low Reynolds number wing and airfoil flows. The sec-
tional drag is also linearly distributed from the root of the
blade to until approximately 85% of the blade radius, and
the drag then falls off rapidly towards the tip because of
the influence of the tip vortex.
Operating the blade sections at or close to their best
3/2
values of Cl /Cd is known improve the aerodynamic ef-
ficiency of a rotor system. This can be understood by writ-
ing the FM in terms of Cl /Cd , i.e,
1 correct for the effects of aperiodicity in the flow (Ref. 35).
FM = !−1 (14)
3/2
2.6 CL
κ+ √
σ CD
after assuming that the overall average lift coefficient
CL = Cl = 6(CT /σ) and all the blade sections operate at
the same sectional drag coefficient Cd = CD . Figures 19a
and b show the sectional lift-to-drag ratio obtained at var-
14
Figure 20: Example of phase-averaged velocity mea-
surements in the flow field of the micro-rotor.
ious blade sections for the different blades. It is apparent
that the baseline blade with the SLT configuration and the
twisted blades have a better L/D ratio than any of the other
blades. Consequently, the overall performance of the ro-
tors with these blades is also better.
Tip Vortex Measurements
Understanding the formation and evolutionary character-
istics of the blade tip vortices is critical. This is because
of their influence on the induced inflow and overall per-
formance of any rotating wing system, irrespective of the
size or the operating Reynolds number (Refs. 1, 6–8).
In the case of MAVs, this is more critical because the tip
vortices are larger in size relative to the dimensions of the
rotor blade (Ref. 1). Figure 15 clearly demonstrates the
importance of the tip vortices, where the loss of circula-
tion (or lift) near the tip of the blade is primarily a result
of the downwash velocity induced by the tip vortices.
To understand the relationship between the tip vor-
tex and the rotor performance, DPIV measurements were
made in the wake of the baseline blade to measure all three
components of the flow velocities. The acquired instanta-
neous velocity maps were conditionally phase-averaged to
The resulting mean velocity across the region of interest
is shown in Fig. 20.
Betz (Ref. 16) developed a mathematical model to
relate the roll-up of the tip vortices with the maximum
sectional bound circulation found across the span of the
blade. Assuming that the tip vortex is responsible for the
loss of circulation near the tip, it was hypothesized that the
circulation contained within the vortex should be equal to
Figure 21: Ratio of total vortex circulation in the tip (a) Growth of the tip vortex core
vortex to the maximum measured bound circulation.

the maximum sectional bound circulation, i.e., all the vor-

ticity beyond the point of maximum sectional circulation
should roll up into the tip vortex. In the present study,
the maximum sectional bound circulation for the baseline
blade was measured to be 0.1820 m2 s−1 .
Figure 21 shows the circulation contained within the to-
tal vortex normalized by the peak sectional bound circu-
lation at various wake ages. Two key observations should
be made here: (1) the peak value of this ratio, and (2) the
wake age (or time) at which this ratio reached its peak
value. The maximum value of this ratio can be seen to be
approximately 0.8. This means that only 80% of vortic-
ity beyond the point of maximum circulation has rolled
up in to the tip vortex, which is smaller than that pre-
dicted by the Betz model. Also, it can be observed that the
peak value is attained at 60◦ wake age, i.e., the tip vortex
roll up is complete over a time that is substantially longer
than for rotor blades operated at higher Reynolds numbers
(Refs. 6, 17). The observed increase in roll-up time was
also found to reflect in the evolutionary properties of tip
vortices—see Fig. 22—and is consistent with the observa-
tion made in Ref. 1. The ratio of total vortex circulation
to the maximum sectional bound circulation can be seen
to decrease slowly with time, suggesting the dissipation of
energy through turbulent mechanisms.
The ratio of circulation contained within the viscous
vortex core to that of the total vortex circulation and its
variation with Reynolds number is given in Fig. 23. It
can be seen that approximately 50–70% of the total vor-
tex circulation is contained within the vortex core. This
figure also includes measurements from another (but sim-
ilar) micro-rotor experiment (Ref. 1), as well as measure-
ments obtained from rotors operated at higher Reynolds
numbers. The small difference between the current mea-
surements and those shown in Ref. 1 can be attributed to
the difference in the experimental and data processing pro-
cedures used to estimate the core and total vortex circula-
tion. In the present study, mean values estimated from
(b) Reduction in the peak swirl velocity with time
Figure 22: Measured sizes of the tip vortex cores and
their associated peak swirl velocities at various wake
ages.
both horizontal and vertical cuts through the vortex core
have been used instead of horizontal cuts only in the case
of Ref. 1. Also, the spatial resolution is much higher in
the present study compared with the other experiment.
Figure 23 is also plotted with an theoretical solution to
the N–S equations as obtained by Iversen (Ref. 36). A
larger value of the circulation ratio basically means that
the diffusion of vorticity will be very slow similar to those
found in a laminar flow at very low vortex Reynolds num-
bers. Despite operating at a lower vortex Reynolds num-
ber, the value of this ratio for the current set of measure-
ments is similar to those found at higher vortex Reynolds
numbers. This implies then that the growth properties of
tip vortices should also be similar to that of tip vortices
generated at higher vortex Reynolds numbers.
Core size and Peak Swirl Velocity
The variation of the measured core size (half the distance
between the swirl velocity peaks) with respect to wake age
(or time) is given in Table 3. The table lists the dimensions

15
 Wake age rc /c Vtip /ΩR rc /c Vtip /ΩR rc /c Vtip /ΩR
ζ H-cut H-cut V-cut V-cut Mean Mean
6◦ 0.0804 0.2888 0.1088 0.2303 0.0946 0.2596
30◦ 0.0520 0.3327 0.05216 0.3106 0.0521 0.3163
60◦ 0.0804 0.2735 0.0994 0.2264 0.0899 0.2500
90◦ 0.1041 0.2316 0.1041 0.2095 0.1041 0.2205
120◦ 0.0946 0.2114 0.1183 0.2055 0.1065 0.2085
150◦ 0.1135 0.2043 0.1278 0.1940 0.1207 0.1991
180◦ 0.0994 0.2180 0.0899 0.2102 0.0946 0.2141
210◦ 0.1372 0.1963 0.1325 0.1700 0.1349 0.1831
240◦ 0.1183 0.2163 0.1325 0.1748 0.1254 0.1956
Table 3: Evolutionary characteristics of the tip vortices: (H-cut – Horizontal cut, V-cut – Vertical cut).

Figure 24: Measured non-dimensionalized velocities in

Figure 23: Ratio of circulation contained within the the tip vortex at ζ = 60◦ wake age.
vortex core to the total vortex circulation.

of the vortex cores and the estimated peak swirl velocities
that were obtained by making two orthogonal (horizon-
tal and vertical) cuts through the vortex, along with their
mean values. It can be observed that the vortex core is
not axisymmetric because the peak swirl velocity occurs
at different radial distances between the two cuts. This
suggests that a complete characterization of the tip vor-
tex properties is not possible using a measurement grid
that passes along a horizontal or vertical line through the
center of the vortex, as is usually assumed in most laser
Doppler velocimeter (LDV) measurements.
Figure 24 shows the measured mean swirl velocities
across the tip vortex at 60◦ wake age. By convention, the
velocities and the radial distances were normalized by the
tip speed of the rotor and the blade radius. Notice that the
peak swirl velocity is not symmetrical on either side of the
vortex, mainly because of its non-zero convection veloc-
ity through the flow. The maximum average peak swirl
velocity was estimated to be 25% of the tip speed of the
rotor. The difference between the two peaks on each side
of the core can be assumed to be its average convection
velocity, which is also a measure of the induced velocity
inside the slipstream boundary of the rotor wake.
One of the complexities in understanding the evolu-
tionary properties of tip vortices is identifying the char-
acteristic variables. Usually, core size of the tip vortex
is non-dimensionalized using a characteristic length such
as chord or radius of the blade. Swirl velocity is normal-
ized using the tip speed of the rotor. However, analyzing
the evolutionary properties of tip vortices also requires a
characteristic time scale. The use of absolute time is not
appropriate because the diffusion of vorticity (and hence
the growth of the vortex core) is not only a function of
time, but also a function vortex Reynolds number (or to-
tal vortex circulation). As a result, vortex circulation must
be taken into account to properly understand the growth
properties of the blade tip vortices.
In the present study, following Refs 36 and 1, the non-
dimensionalized mean core size and the peak swirl veloc-
ity were plotted in Fig. 22 against non-dimensionalized
time. It can be seen from Fig. 22 that the core size ini-
tially decreases before starting to increase, which is a di-
rect result of the action of viscous and turbulent diffusion.
The initial reduction in the core size of the tip vortex, as
mentioned earlier, can be attributed to its delayed roll up
(Ref. 1) at these low Reynolds numbers. Also, the nor-
malized initial core size of the tip vortex was found to be
larger than those found on larger scale rotors (Ref. 7). In

16
the present study, the initial core size, r0 , was found to be
approximately 5% of the mean blade chord.
The curve fit in Fig. 22a is obtained using a variation of
Squire’s core growth model, which is given by
r on integration of section properties. Estimating the
ζ lift and drag distributions along the blade span using
rc = r02 + 4ανδ (15)
Ω
where α is Lamb’s constant and δ is the ratio of appar-
ent to actual viscosity. A value of δ = 6.4 seems to fit the
growth rate of the vortex core estimated from the measure-
ments. This observation is consistent with Fig. 23, which
suggested that the rate of core growth of the tip vortices
should be similar to those observed using larger scale ro-
tors, despite operating at lower vortex Reynolds numbers.
The measured peak swirl velocity for increasing time is
shown in Fig. 22b. This, as expected, can be seen to de-
crease inversely with t 1/2 to conserve circulation.
Conclusions
To identify and measure the various sources of profile
and induced losses, measurements of the performance and
the wake characteristics of a small MAV-scale or “micro-
rotor” was performed. Several rotor blade configurations
have been tested over a range of pitch angles and rota-
tional speed combinations. Several new observations have
been found that help in understanding the nature of such
small-scale rotor performance. The following are conclu-
sions derived from this study:
1. Conventional rotor design strategies for reducing in-
duced and profile losses by altering the blade shape
seem applicable to MAV-scale rotor systems. The ef-
fects of blade twist were shown to reduce losses and
improve performance. It is not yet clear, however, if
there is an optimum blade twist that can help to max-
imize rotor efficiency, although linear twist seems to
be a good start.
2. Reducing profile losses through blade section (airfoil
shape) changes (albeit non-traditional changes) is
an effective means of improving rotor performance.
In the present case, modified rectangular blades
with circular-arc airfoil sections that have sharpened
leading- and trailing-edges showed improved perfor-
mance compared to the other rotor blades that were
tested. The primary issues for the future are in bet-
ter understanding the airfoil shapes that can give best
aerodynamic performance in the rotating-wing flow
environment at low chord Reynolds numbers below
50,000. To this end, further spanwise loads measure-
ments are necessary.
17
3. DPIV was found to be a powerful technique for in-
terrogating the flow near the rotor. Good correla-
tions were found between the balance measurements
against the estimated thrust and torque values based
flow field measurements with the circulation and mo-
mentum deficiency techniques gave good insight into
the performance of the rotor system.
4. The tip vortex seems to plays a more important role
in influencing the performance of a MAV-scale ro-
tor because of its larger overall size relative to the
radius and chord dimensions of the rotor. The roll-
up process of the tip vortex was measured to take a
relatively longer time when compared to tip vortex
developments that have been measured higher vortex
Reynolds numbers.
5. Despite the much lower vortex Reynolds numbers
found on MAV-scale rotors, the tip vortices exhibited
growth properties (viscous and turbulent diffusion)
similar to that observed at higher Reynolds numbers.
But the evolutionary characteristics of tip vortices,
when analyzed in the appropriate time scales, con-
firmed a higher growth rate than that would be ex-
pected based on the vortex Reynolds number. About
50% of the total vortex circulation was found to be
inside the viscous vortex core, the circulation which
increased with time.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported, in part, by the Multi-
University Research Initiative under Grant ARMY
W911NF0410176. Dr. Tom Doligalski is the technical
monitor. The authors also wish to acknowledge Tyler
Huismann for his contributions in this work.
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