International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences

The Korean Society for Aeronautical and Space Sciences (한국항공우주학회)
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Numerical Investigation of Aerodynamic Interference in Complete Helicopter Configurations

  • Lee, Hee-Dong (Department of Aerospace Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) ;
  • Yu, Dong-Ok (Department of Aerospace Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) ;
  • Kwon, Oh-Joon (Department of Aerospace Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) ;
  • Kang, Hee-Jung (Department, Korea Aerospace Research Institute)
  • Received : 2011.04.05
  • Accepted : 2011.06.13
  • Published : 2011.06.30
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Abstract

Unsteady flow simulations of complete helicopter configurations were conducted, and the flow fields and the aerodynamic interferences between the main rotor, fuselage, and tail rotor were investigated. For these simulations, a three-dimensional flow solver based on unstructured meshes was used, coupled with an overset mesh technique to handle relative motion among those components. To validate the flow solver, calculations were made for a UH-60A complete helicopter configuration at high-speed and low-speed forward flight conditions, and the unsteady airloads on the main rotor blade were compared to available flight test data and other calculated results. The results showed that the fuselage changed the rotor inflow distribution in the main rotor blade airloads. Such unsteady vibratory airloads were produced on the fuselage, which were nearly in-phase with the blade passage over the fuselage. The flow solver was then applied to the simulation of a generic complete helicopter configuration at various flight conditions, and the results were compared with those of the CAMRAD-II comprehensive analysis code. It was found that the main rotor blades strongly interact with a pair of disk-vortices at the outer edge of the rotor disk plane, which leads to high pulse airloads on the blade, and these airloads behave differently depending on the specific flight condition.

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References

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