The configuration of the airfoil has a significant impact on its aerodynamic performance. This paper aims to improve the aerodynamic efficiency of the cycloidal rotor system by using dynamically morphing blades. Three different camber morphing concepts (leading edge deflection, trailing edge deformation and cambered NACA profile) have been applied to a baseline 2-bladed system with rotating and pitching NACA0015 aerofoils. Then, based on these camber concepts, 2D URANS numerical simulations were conducted for blades with different morphing degrees using OpenFOAM. The simulation results verified that the flow field condition could be optimized and significantly higher thrust and efficiency could be achieved by properly tuning the morphing control. Especially, in the case of 10% trailing edge camber and 16% NACA camber, compared with baseline case, 28.1% and 43.5% higher figure of merit values were obtained, respectively. The simulation files and the results for the last rotor revolution of each case presented in this paper are available in the following dataset: https://doi.org/10.18419/darus-2191.

No abstract