| Abstract: | To understand the vortex-ring state and to develop an approach for predicting its boundary, a series of model rotor tests of vertical descent and oblique descent have been conducted on a newly-built test apparatus - the Whirling Beam. The test results showed some unsteady aerodynamic behavior of the model rotor operating in the vortex-ring state. A very irregular variation of the rotortorque at low rate-of-descent was observed here for the first time. We considered it to be the start of the "power settling" and determined the critical descent velocity according to this observation. A previous criterion for the vortex-ring state was modified to give a semi-empirical method for predicting the entire vortex-ring state boundary. The computed boundary shows a good correlation with the model test results and the flight experiences. |
