A Comparitive Analysis of a Cycloidal Rotor and a Standard Helicopter Rotor

Most military grade micro air vehicles do not have the ability to hover. In order to try to create a better micro air vehicles a cycloidal rotor was suggested. A cycloidal rotor has four blades connected by an X on each side with an axis to rotate around through the center, and spin horizontally. This experiment compared the cycloidal rotor to the helicopter rotor. The comparison was conducted using a system created by Sidney & Leishman (2014). Their system consisted of spinning the rotor in a basin with the bottom covered in a small particles similar to flour. Then the rotor was spun and the distance the flour moved determined the strength of the downdraft. Each rotor was built and spun with a drill in a bin filled with flour. Then the height of the flour on the sides were measured. It was hypothesised that the cycloidal rotor would have the most flour on the sides. The results showed the null hypothesis was not rejected; T* = 1.645 T\u3c .05. The data was analyzed with a 2-sample T-test at alpha = 0.05