A steady-state fluid–structure interaction analysis on an elasto-flexible membrane blade is presented. The membrane blade geometry is designed based on the NASA-Ames Phase VI model. Form-finding is used to compute the pre-stressed membrane’s initial equilibrium shape directly on the Computer-Aided Design model using isogeometric analysis. To study the effects and potential advantages of such a membrane blade concept, a co-simulation framework is used to couple fluid and structure solvers. The resulting pressure, thrust, and torque coefficient distributions are presented and compared to the reference configuration. The membrane’s deflection increases the blade’s camber, which results in a change in the thrust and torque radial distributions. The larger decrease of the axial momentum at the wake of the flexible configuration indicates that it has a larger capacity to extract energy from the flow than its rigid counterpart.

介绍了弹性柔性膜叶片的稳态流固耦合分析。膜叶片几何形状是根据 NASA-Ames Phase VI 模型设计的。找形用于使用等几何分析直接在计算机辅助设计模型上计算预应力膜的初始平衡形状。为了研究这种薄膜叶片概念的影响和潜在优势，使用联合仿真框架来耦合流体和结构求解器。显示了由此产生的压力、推力和扭矩系数分布，并与参考配置进行了比较。薄膜的偏转增加了叶片的弯度，从而导致推力和扭矩径向分布的变化。