Fidelity Enhancement of a Multirotor Dynamic Inflow Model via System Identification

Abstract

Multirotor analytical dynamic inflow models in the literature, such as pressure potential superposition inflow model or velocity potential superposition inflow model (VPSIM), have been shown to capture the fundamental inflow interference effects between the rotors. Some of the differences in inflow predictions seen between these analytic models and high-fidelity wake models are attributed to missing real flow effects such as wake distortion, contraction, decay, swirl, etc. As such, correction terms are needed in the analytically derived multirotor finite-state inflow models, because of the potential flow and rigid wake assumptions they are based on, in order to capture some of the missing real flow effects in them. This paper develops a systematic methodology for arriving at the needed correction terms in the VPSIM through comparisons of its inflow predictions with those of a viscous vortex particle model (VVPM). Also, a procedure is developed to assess the relative importance of individual real flow effects and the associated corrections needed for improving the overall fidelity of the VPSIM. The developed methodology is applied to the Harrington coaxial rotor using its geometric and aerodynamic data from the literature. It is shown that the addition of swirl coupling correction terms to the VPSIM significantly improves its correlations with the VVPM. Further, it is shown that the required corrections are reasonably insensitive to thrust sharing ratio conditions between the rotors.