Viability of Cross-Flow Fan for Vertical Take-Off and Landing Aircraft

The present study is focused on determining a housing design that, when paired with an off-the-shelf cross-flow fan rotor, will generate a trust-to-weight ratio significant enough to allow for vertical take-off. The commercial computational fluid dynamics software, ANSYS CFX, was used to perform a computational analysis of various housing designs until a suitable design was identified to construct for experimentation. Following the analytical phase, the conceptual housing was fabricated and paired with an appropriate rotor to validate the predicted performance. The experimental model was operated at speeds from 4,000 to 8,000 rpm and the actual and projected thrust calculations were found to agree with a maximum difference of less than 7percent.

Department dc:contributor.department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE)

Grantor dc:publisher

Monterey, CA; Naval Postgraduate School

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Delagrange, Christopher T.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hobson, Garth V.

Statement dc:rights

• This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10945/7330

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:calhoun.nps.edu:10945/7330