Preliminary Study of Radial Flow Effects on Rotor Blades

Abstract

The accumulation of experimental flight‐test and model rotor data, has permitted a stall delaying phenomenon to be observed, such that the most advanced rotor‐performance theory tends to be unduly conservative in estimating rotor lift capability. An example of this conservativeness is shown in Figure A. Despite this lift augmentation, there is no experimental indication of a reduction in the separation drag at the predicted stall point; the theoretical calculations using the refined aerodynamic theory are in reasonable agreement with experimental drag results.