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The Shake-The-Box technique was applied to experimentally quantify the time-resolved volumetric flow field around a free-flying quadcopter UAV with an overall span of about 0.5 m. State-of-the-art LED illumination and high-speed camera equipment was combined with modern Lagrangian tracer particle tracking and data assimilation techniques, facilitating a measurement volume larger than 1.5 m 3 . The setup allowed for both hover and limited maneuvering of the quadcopter, while resolving even small details of the complex interactional aerodynamics. In hover out of ground effect, the four individual rotor wakes merged into a single jet within a few rotor radii below the rotor planes. Evaluating the mass and momentum fluxes over suitable control volumes yields accurate estimates for the quadcopter's total thrust, the asymmetric thrust distribution between front and back rotors, and the entrainment of external flow through turbulent mixing. Hover in ground effect decreases the power requirement and induces recirculating flow in the center of the four rotors. The outwash pattern is non-uniform with jets developing between the rotors and pointing in radially outward directions. Forward flight cases result in a skewed, rapidly merging wake flanked by the roll-up of two "supervortices" similar to the wingtip vortices of fixed-wing vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The blade tip vortex system is a crucial feature in the wake of helicopter rotors, and its correct prediction represents a major challenge in the numerical simulation of rotor flows. A common phenomenon in modern high-fidelity CFD simulations is the breakdown of the primary vortex system in hover due to secondary vortex braids. Since they are strongly influenced by the numerical settings, the degree to which these secondary vortex structures actually physically occur is still discussed and needs experimental validation. In the current work, the development of secondary vortex structures in the wake of a two-bladed rotor in hover conditions was investigated by combining stereoscopic particle image velocimetry measurements in different measurement planes and high-fidelity simulations. Secondary vortex structures were detected and quantified at different axial locations in the wake by applying an identical scheme to the measured and simulated velocity data. In agreement, it was found that the number of secondary vortices is maximum at a distance of 0.8 R below the rotor. The more intense secondary vortex structures were quantitatively well captured in the simulation, whereas in the experiment a larger number of weaker vortices were detected. No distinct preferential direction of rotation was found for the secondary vortices, but they tended to develop in vortex pairs with alternating sense of rotation. A clustered occurrence of secondary vortices was observed close to the primary tip vortices, where the rolled-up blade shear layer breaks down into coherent vortex structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]