Determination of a Light Helicopter Flight Performance at the Preliminary Design Stage

Abstract

Promising solutions for the problem of the extensively time-consuming modern urban transportation has been found in the use of light and very light helicopters. This paper presents a part of the preliminary design methodology, compiled at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Belgrade and includes performance calculations of such helicopters. Due to limited budgets and an extremely demanding process of helicopter development, it is highly significantt that during all development stages reliable performance estimates are obtained in order to ensure assigned operational requirements. The scope of this paper is confined to the preliminary design stage, where it is customary to substitute the very complex helicopter rotor dynamics with its averaged mechanical and aerodynamic characteristics and apply certain empirically verified simplifications. Based on this approach, the independent, efficient and reliable computer programs for the calculation of different performance characteristics have been developed. In addition to their application on an actual on-going project, they have also been applied on several existing helicopters of a similar class for a more accurate determination of the empirical input parameters. The applied methodology and obtained results have been presented, verifying the overall algorithm efficiency.