With the recent interest in Martian exploration using unmanned aerial vehicles, an experimental study was conducted to investigate rotor performance at Martian atmospheric conditions. Both simulation and testing of rotors is vital for the evaluation of performance and behavior of a rotor, especially for operations at Martian atmospheric density and pressure. One critical test that has not been performed to date is helicopter forward flight testing at Martian atmospheric densities. To achieve this, a test was conducted in a tunnel facility which could be evacuated to the atmospheric pressure and density of Mars. A 40-in diameter rotor, roughly approximating the proposed Mars Helicopter design by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was tested in forward flight at Mars atmospheric pressure at the NASA Ames Planetary Aeolian Laboratory. The goal of this experiment was to collect rotor thrust, rotational speed, power, torque, and acoustics measurements. Subsequently, these results are correlated with simulated cases using a mid-fidelity computational fluid dynamics simulation. As expected, rotor thrust and power are drastically reduced at air densities 100 times lower than at sea level on Earth. In addition, Reynolds number effects seem to play a vital role at reduced pressure that cannot be neglected in the simulation.
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