Hovering Rotor Performance Prediction Throughout the Design Cycle

A challenge in establishing rotor performance map for sizing tool during design cycle is the rotor performance uncertainty for full vehicle. Sometimes, simplified tests at different setup/scale are conducted to guide performance map, but this introduces another uncertainty due to configuration difference from full vehicle. To aid insights, validated computational fluid dynamics simulations (using CREATE-AV™ Helios) were carried out to examine hovering rotor performance prediction variations at different design stages, or different modeling/testing setup with identical blade design. Quantitative rotor figure of merit differences has been demonstrated along with descriptions of underlying physical reasons. The examined model setup includes isolated rigid blades with and without flapping, elastic blades, model-scale blades, whirl-tower conditions, blades installed on fuselage, and full-vehicle including tail rotor. Both fully turbulent flow and laminar-turbulence transition flow assumptions were simulated. Rigid blades showed a negative impact on performance due to the lack of nose-down elastic twist. Model scale suffered from lower Reynolds number effects but took advantage of delayed laminar-turbulence transition. Whirl-tower blockage and altered vortex trajectories reduced peak figure of merit but delayed stall. Fuselage installation increased performance with partial in-ground effect. However, the tail rotor disrupted the main rotor vortex system and caused a substantial figure of merit drop. The figure of merit variation summary from current study can provide qualitative trends and rough estimate of the rotor performance change along different analysis or test condition during new design process. Well validated computational fluid dynamics simulations can be used as a risk-reduction approach by comparing with simplified-model results (used during fast design cycle) with the expected full-vehicle model results.