Browse Topic: Computer simulation
With recent advancements in the field of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), including Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL), Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), and Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), it is beneficial to understand the impact of complex flow features on operations in urban and shipboard environments. Testing methods for studying these impacts, including simulated environments such as wind-tunnel flows and engineered equivalence tests, will need to be adapted to prepare for when the vehicles of interest are too large for the available testing facilities, and to permit low-cost alternatives for industry and government. This work demonstrates a development process that can be used to ensure the complex-flow-environment phenomena can be studied. First, this work illustrates the development of downdraft and turbulence flow types in a wind tunnel setting, and assesses the response of an M600 RPAS to these flows. Then, the same parameters are compared for a Mission Task
Blade Vortex Interaction (BVI) noise primarily occurs in rotorcraft when tip vortices generated by the blades interact with other blades. When BVI noise occurs, it dominates at mid and high blade passing frequency harmonics. To mitigate BVI noise, we employ leading-edge serrations on the OLS rotor between 75% blade span and the tip. High-fidelity computational fluid dynamics simulations, using delayed detached eddy simulation, combined with an acoustic analogy, are conducted to analyze various leading-edge serration geometries with different serration height and wavelength parameters. The results show that rotor BVI noise is reduced by up to 5 dB at the rear of the vehicle when serrations are applied, with higher serration height-to-wavelength ratios proving more effective. The findings demonstrate that when vortices directly impinge on the rotor blades, the serrations disrupt the vortices and generate a fluctuating pressure field on the blade surface, leading to destructive phase
Leveraging lessons learned from NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter and concepts such as the Mars Sample Recovery Helicopter, and Mars Science Helicopter has enabled partners at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA Ames, and AeroVironment, Inc. to mature a hexacopter vehicle concept (Chopper) with the ability to support a wide range of mission scenarios. This work focuses on the critical aeronautics-related challenges encountered transitioning from an Ingenuity-size vehicle to a much larger vehicle (˜15 times the mass) and discusses engineering efforts to address these challenges. Critical upgrades include optimized airfoils, higher solidity blades, and higher fidelity computational models. Because multiple rotors are required to lift the heavier vehicle, increased understanding of the impact of rotor-to-rotor interactions is also necessary. Rotors have been designed that are tailored to more demanding missions and will be validated in a joint test campaign between the partners
This paper presents findings from a joint computational-experimental venture that seeks to advance the physical understanding and validation-quality database for a model-scale generic tractor proprotor–wing system during the tiltrotor conversion maneuver. This study evaluates the interactions in a quasi-static manner for various proprotor tilt angles (θ) across the tiltrotor conversion maneuver. Independent experimental measurements of the wing and proprotor loads accompany synchronous wing surface pressure measurements along with stereoscopic particle image velocimetry flow field measurements at discrete spanwise locations. High-fidelity computational fluid dynamics simulations leverage the multi-disciplinary rotorcraft simulation tool CREATE™-AV Helios to assess the interactional aerodynamics of the proprotor–wing configuration across the tiltrotor conversion maneuver. Computational simulations use a newly implemented Helios module to trim to the experimental proprotor thrust
This study numerically investigates the relationship between airspeed, drop height, and ground water coverage during helicopter-based aerial firefighting. With the effect of global warming and human activities the threat of forest fires has increased and finding optimal water dumping strategies for effective suppression is a crucial part of the firefighting operations. How varying airspeed and water drop height influence water dispersion and ground coverage has been analyzed utilizing numerical simulations with the VOF model in STAR-CCM+. Findings show that to maximize firefighting efficiency, balancing two contradicting phenomena is essential. These are, minimizing ineffective mist formation due to high drop height/high airspeed and fueling of the fire from rotor downwash due to low height/low airspeed passing by over the fire zone.
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