I asked about that at Oshkosh. The answer I got wasn't very satisfying, and I haven't been able to work out the tradeoffs for myself. There are 32 tip vortices, but they're all small: it's not obvious what their net effect would be. Rotorcraft folk often talk about "disc loading" but that's not really relevant, because most of the lift comes from the outer part of the rotor. For a given limiting tip speed, lift depends linearly on diameter, I think, so each of these props would develop very little - but there are 32 of them...
Any rotorcraft experts out there, who'd like to give us an opinion on the pros and cons of this configuration?
I asked about that at Oshkosh. The answer I got wasn't very satisfying, and I haven't been able to work out the tradeoffs for myself. There are 32 tip vortices, but they're all small: it's not obvious what their net effect would be. Rotorcraft folk often talk about "disc loading" but that's not really relevant, because most of the lift comes from the outer part of the rotor. For a given limiting tip speed, lift depends linearly on diameter, I think, so each of these props would develop very little - but there are 32 of them...
Any rotorcraft experts out there, who'd like to give us an opinion on the pros and cons of this configuration?
Curious minds want to know!