Search results

Few modeling approaches exist for cycloidal rotors because they are a prototypal technology. Thus, the purpose of this study was to develop new models for their analysis and validation. These models were used to analyze cycloidal rotors and a helicopter that uses them instead of a tail rotor.

Three different models were developed to study the aerodynamic response of cycloidal rotors. They are a simplified analytical model resolved algebraically; a multibody model resolved numerically; and an unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. The models were validated using data coming from three different experimental sources, each with rotor spans and radii of roughly 1 m. The CFD model was used to investigate the influence of rotor arms. The efficiency and the stability of the rotor in different configurations were studied. An aeroelastic multibody simulation was used to verify the influence of flexibility on the rotor response.

The analyses suggested that cycloidal rotors can increase the efficiency of a helicopter at high velocities while flexibility reduces it and may lead to instabilities.

These models do not consider the effect of boundary layer friction on the trailing vortices generated by the rotor blades.

These models allow a four-step aerodynamic optimization procedure. First, a range of optimized configurations is obtained by the analytical model. Second, the multibody model refines that range. Third, the CFD model detects eventual problematic blade interactions.

The models presented should serve researchers and industrials looking for a means to measure the performance of cycloidal rotors concepts. The results presented also guide an initial cycloidal rotor design.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the multiphysics analysis of helicopter rotors under icing conditions by coupling the iced rotor’s aerodynamics, analyzed by CFD, with the rotor’s structural characteristics, analyzed by CSD.

The current work introduces supercomputer-based computational approaches capable of assessing the impact of ice accretion on the aerodynamics, blade dynamics, vibrations and loading of a rotorcraft. The rigid and elastic motions of the blades are accounted for through a loose coupling of the flow solver to a multibody dynamics solver. The coupling framework allows for comprehensive aeroelastic simulations of iced rotors in hover and in forward flight.

The flow and structural modules were validated on a full helicopter configuration in forward flight using the ROBIN experimental model. The tip structural deflections were in very close agreement with the experimental measurements.

The results of the CFD analyses are limited by the available experimental results they can be compared to. In dry air CFD, three-dimensional (3D) experiments occur first and CFD is then compared to them; in icing, the opposite is true: 3D experiments (if they are ever done, as they are very expensive) chase CFD and sometimes never occur.

This paper presents an outline of how CFD and computational stress dynamics (CSD) analyses can be linked and provides a toolbox for deeper investigation of the complex flows over helicopters operating under difficult in-flight icing conditions.

More and more helicopters are designed to be able to operate in hostile environments such as rescuing and saving lives over the oceans or mountains, conditions under which icing encounters cannot be avoided.

A loosely coupled CFD/CSD framework that accounts for the rotor blades structural response to aerodynamic loading and ice accretion in hover and forward flight has been presented. This versatile and cost-effective framework provides a more accurate estimation of the helicopter rotor performance and its degradation due to icing encounters during the early design stages than traditional CFD tools.